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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29187843">The Pictures In My Head</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento'>brokenmemento</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Cannon Divergent, F/F, Post Season 1, Sort of AU, going back to cannon moments</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 14:07:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>26,762</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29187843</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What if you could go back, relive the parts of your life where you went wrong? Do everything over again for a chance to turn it all around? A chance meeting in Skellige and a lot of heartaches lead Yennefer to take that chance after the battle of Sodden/Second Nilfgaardian War.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tissaia de Vries &amp; Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>63</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>131</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Adrift and Aching</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>*Okay, I am having writer's block on THE SCENE with my other fic. So...last installment is coming, hopefully soon. Enjoy this (hopefully) in the wait.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yennefer is sure somewhere, there are dreams. There are people who actually dream them. Ones who think that they’re possible to attain. </p><p>But the thing about Yennefer is that she doesn’t dream anymore. They stopped coming long ago. She’s not even sure she can pinpoint when the visions stopped arriving on her eyes. When she no longer woke with a smile or a start because of what came to her when slumber stretched its languid and bony fingers into her flesh again. </p><p>Realistically, it goes back farther than Sodden. (There should have been nightmares after that. There was nothing. Just gaping, inexplicable blankness) Maybe they died when she learned the prize kingdom she thought she wanted to be in held little glamour or excitement. But no, ambition and dreaming, while sharing a fine line, do differ after all. </p><p>No, the wants and hopes ceased somewhere between the pigpen in Vengerberg, after she was taken away from there and Aretuza became more than just a concept but also twin gashes on her wrists. Between the loss and the anger and the dejection, Yennefer lost the ability to see past any of those things. </p><p>The final nail, what’s driven her to be lying on the shoddy wooden table and listening to the wild lope of her heart in her chest, is something more recent though. The awful echo of which never, ever stops. </p><p>Splinters enter her hands, tiny little slivers, as she flexes her fingers, fanning them out from her palm. She swallows, grainy dust sticking in her throat. These things are of little consequence though. </p><p>She’s walked her path, made a mess of it, lost hope somewhere along the way. The future doesn’t look bleak—just as blank as her nighttime hours have been since the worst moment of her life. (Ironic since there have been a lot)</p><p>“What happens if it doesn’t work?” Yennefer finds herself asking. The prospect of it is not very real. Perhaps even more so from the venom of her previous words. The stock that she lacked for what she’s doing. </p><p>“You will open your eyes and wake up to your failure, your heartache,” the raspy, aged voice reaffirms. “But you will have had your first dream in over a lifetime.”</p><p>“And if I succeed?” It’s lofty, of course. Yennefer has no compunctions anymore though, very least of all about what she’s doing. Being numb is a very real thing. </p><p>“The life you know will simply…” a flutter of hands. “Disappear. That is if you fix the things that need fixing.” The tone changes. “But no one has ever done that, Yennefer of Vengerberg. Absolutely no one at all. Everyone who’s come to me looking to forge a different path has left this place on the exact same one they came in on.”</p><p>Yennefer growls, snaps her eyes even tighter shut. “Well, none of those people were me.” Still cocky, arrogant. She doesn’t care. Not anymore. </p><p>“Still so sure of yourself, so puffed up,” the voice prattles on. “But you’re just like the rest: wanting to run from the life you have, seeking the one that got away.” </p><p>Yennefer would bolt upright, sneer at the haughty tone. Say something to defend herself, defend the way she’s ended up, mistakes be damned. But there is no time for any of that because Yennefer? She feels the tether to life cut. </p><p>From that point on, she floats and floats. She sinks into an abyss, one that seems as endless as the echo that chased her into a shack and an old witch’s clutches, agreeing to magic she has no belief in, much less understands. </p><p>The reverberation of it should float away, just like Yennefer is. Instead though, it gets louder and louder until Yennefer can take it no more. She sits up with her hands on her head and a scream ripping from her lips. </p><p>——-//——-</p><p>
  <em> Three Days Previously  </em>
</p><p>Yennefer watches the sails unfurl of a nearby ship, the cloth catching the wind and billowing out. Sun beats down on the heavy fabric, scorches the already tanned skin peeking out from wide hats and thin shirts meant to let out some of the heat. </p><p>As if Yennefer weren’t already in a mood, the day in Skellige is particularly hot for the isles, even more so with the bustle of bodies in Kaer Trolde. She usually likes it here, what with the unpolished folk and the same roughness from the jarls from the Craite Clan. </p><p>They’re unpretentious people, just as likely to pour you an ale if you respect their lives but will easily deck any offenders for heresy and treason. Or worse. All those things aside, Yennefer has always liked the “get-them-as-you-see-them” character to those in the citadel behind her. </p><p>She watches as bulky arms on even bulkier men load crates and barrels in quick succession, wanting to not tarry in order to catch the good trade winds flapping the sails. The docks are noisy with action, but not enough to completely rid Yennefer of the throbbing one at the back of her skull. </p><p>Her mood darkens by degrees, as if that were even possible, and she would verbally expel it out if it wouldn’t garner her the wary and confused looks of a bunch of dockworkers and deckhands, a sprinkling of a captain or two in there as well. </p><p>But Yennefer will be keeping her growls to herself, her feet remaining mostly stationary right where they are despite the pull to join the fray of the men and leave Ard Skellige for good, no matter the destination. (Even if she does like it here, and rather a lot) It all boils down to the hard kernel of fact now: she’s got nowhere to go.</p><p>Her mood carries her to <em> Arinbjorn </em> and Jorund is one of the first to greet her, even though she’s long stopped being a stranger. They all know her here, know of her connection to a different isle that seems a lifetime away. She curls up into herself as he approaches. </p><p>“Let me buy ye a drink at least, try ‘n wipe that awful face away,” he motions to the barkeep, holding up two crooked fingers. His bear furs ruffle as he moves and the thatch of red hair is in stark contrast to the gleam of his otherwise bald head. </p><p>Yennefer would love ale but not company exactly, so she brings up a hand to her face and sighs in exasperation. “Fuck, Jorund. Drink sounds great, but I don’t think I’ve got it in me to play friendly today.”</p><p>She absolutely doesn’t. If he hangs around, she’ll bite his head off, the gentle giant will take it as an affront, and there will go her reputation of being an appreciative recipient of kind gestures. </p><p>“Aye, it can’t be all bad,” his big palm takes a mug, slides the other to her. </p><p>“Oh, but it really can.” She picks up the proffered mug, hoisting it in front of his face. “In fact, I’m so beyond any fuck to give, I’d likely not find a smile in the bottom of this either.” <em> Or kill the echoing voice. </em> She takes a long pull. There might be froth on her lips and chin when she does. Being a lady is the last thing on her mind. She assumes Jorund couldn’t care less anyway. </p><p>She leaves him by the bar, slouching at a table in the far side of the room. He turns and studies her a moment, face pensive. The scrutiny isn’t exactly appreciated, but she can’t exactly say that either, so she decides to change tactics a bit.</p><p>“Thank you for the ale, truly, but I am going to drink until thoughts are very fuzzy to come by now.” She salutes him with the mug again and downs more. This will hurt tomorrow. <em> Another inconsequential day.  </em></p><p>Only there are a lot of those now, huh? Yennefer sighs as Jorund moves off, leaving her thankfully be. </p><p>She thinks of the ship in the harbor, wonders if it’s hauled in its anchor by now and is off again to see the world. There’s little of interest left to Yennefer though. She’s practically seen it all, done it all too. More recently, a venture into Sodden. And, well, look how that turned out. </p><p>
  <em> Really fucking awful.  </em>
</p><p>Words begin to float like bubbles and Yennefer tries to pop them to a fizzle, things like <em> danger </em> and <em> death </em> and <em> destruction </em> and <em> dimeritium </em> all buzz like gnats. She wishes she could swipe them away for good. </p><p>That really dark place that she seems to dwell in now envelopes her again on all sides. </p><p>
  <em> ~I thought there was something there. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> ~I guess I thought I could be enough and you’d like for me to try to be </em>
</p><p>
  <em> ~Why is it when there’s nothing left, I always turn to you? </em>
</p><p>
  <em> ~Tell me I imagined that look in your eyes on that hill. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> ~There is no ‘us,’ Yennefer and I don’t foresee how there ever could be. </em>
</p><p>Oh, right. That last one wasn’t her own inner monologue. Those are words that actually got spoken. Like a knife, they’re what ripped Yennefer to shreds. </p><p>That was almost a month ago. While Yennefer is not haunted by them when she closes her eyes, she hears them on repeat in every lucid second of her life. Ale helps. Herbs are better. Being asleep is the best remedy, but Yennefer finds it will not come very often. Not even with said ale and herbs wrecking her system.</p><p>Her wits are at their end. Her heart crumbles out in pebbles, once a stone and before that, was once something beating and vital. Now, there is a hollow. It’s where the darkness lives. </p><p>Four mugs disappear while she submerges deeper into the things she cannot change, the lives she isn’t living. Yennefer is well into a drunken state when another voice paws through the haze of what she’s consumed, agitating her even further. </p><p>While the voice isn’t addressing her, the racquet of the speech, warped by time and hoarseness, still cuts through the din of men berating her.</p><p>“It’s been a long day and I’d just like a drink,” the coarseness speaks.</p><p>Yennefer can agree to that but little empathy rises up as the men continue on with their snarls and general unfriendly gestures.</p><p>“What’s a thing like you doin’ in a place like this? Yore more’n likely to turn our mead ta piss than ye are ta drink it,” another gruff arsehole pokes. </p><p>The Skellige aren’t so great with strangers. Travelers are a begrudging issue that they know they must deal with, but it’s usually just quiet if not tense observance of the stranger. Yennefer no longer holds those qualities in these lands, taken in as a clan member essentially by this point, but she has to admit, the level of castigation going on seems a bit out of place—even for Skellige. </p><p>“Yore kind innit welcome here,” another chimes in but then Yennefer feels the subtle shift of eyes to her direction. She doesn’t move her head or even acknowledge their stares. “Well, she’s different!” He works to amend, pointing a meaty thumb. </p><p>Yennefer has to cough out a laugh. So ridiculous, despite the slightly heartwarming quality of them defending Yennefer’s presence now. Well, if her heart could warm at this point. Someone else has snuffed the light from it completely. </p><p>“I’m not looking for trouble, just a drink in a pub to get rid of some jitters.” That’s what the woman says to a cacophony of hoots and hollers. </p><p>“Jitters? Why’n ye create ‘em!” followed by “Yore a witch afer’n all!” fills the room. </p><p>Color her intrigued now. An eyebrow raises as she stares at her ale, still listening to the words being passed around. Really, she hadn’t planned on getting in the middle of this at all but now that there is someone being accused of being a witch?</p><p>A hard memory lumps in her head and heart, but she brushes it aside with the clatter of her metal mug on the table and her boots loudly sounding on the planks behind the horde of men surrounding the woman she cannot see. </p><p>When one head turns and sees her approaching, his eyes go wide and the rest get tapped and fold back away from the circle, revealing a hunched woman as old as the hills. Her gray hair is bedraggled and deep lines are etched on her face. Her clothing is simple, yet layered and a heavy necklace of beads and other odds and ends hang at her neck. She straightens as much as she can when Yennefer approaches, her back permanently hunched. </p><p>Yennefer feels bile rise immediately and her steps falter before she gathers herself with enough self-assuredness to approach not only the group of men but also the woman who reminds her glaringly of the condition she left behind. </p><p>“What seems to be the trouble here?” Yennefer’s words slur a bit and she frowns as her voice hits the air. The woman eyes her warily. Yennefer slaps one of the men on the back. “I know we don’t take kindly to strangers or witches, but I used to be both, so maybe we should let this one speak.”</p><p>The woman sits silently. It grates on Yennefer, the lifeline she’s throwing this woman not being taken. She rolls her shoulders and tries to tame her own sneer. She’s not Skellige. Hell, she’s not even Aedirnian really. <em> Aretuza </em> floats like a wraith’s wail. Yennefer refuses to listen. She feels her lips curl a little but works to settle herself again. </p><p>“So, have these lug-heads here pegged you right, or are you just in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Yennefer inquires. That’s when she notices the talismans and other bits of animals bones and skulls, and she levels her look at the woman, knowing exactly what she is. </p><p>“Just because my magic is done outside of your fancy school walls, Yennefer of Vengerberg, doesn’t mean you know a lump more than I do.” The woman fixes her with her own stare and Yennefer finds her patience waning. </p><p>“Don’t blaspheme the people who are doing their part in keeping young boys and girls from unleashing their chaos on the world,” Yennefer snaps, not quite believing what’s coming out of her own mouth. “I’m a product of that ‘fancy school’ and I’m the best damn mage on the Continent.” </p><p>And there it is. Yennefer’s own arrogant self rearing her head again. This old hag has spent, from what Yennefer can tell, the bulk of her life in a fucking swamp in Temeria. To think she’s even on the same level.</p><p>“My magic…”</p><p>“Your rituals and cavorting with spirits and the dead is something I hardly call magic,” Yennefer says, all but done with the conversation. She turns around and intends to exit the mess completely. She never makes it that far. </p><p>“You spit on my rituals and dismiss me because of the connection I have to other places, to a way of casting that you’ve never been taught and likely will never learn because you don’t know it even exists.”</p><p>“Hexing water hags and drowners so you can yank their brains and tongues and whatever else it is you…” Yennefer looks down at the necklace again, a tooth strikingly obvious. “Gods, whatever it is you do can hardly compete with what I’ve done...the things I’ve had to do.”</p><p>Mixing aphrodisiacs and fertility ‘cures,’ placing whole crowds in trances just to watch them writhe against one another’s skin, placing glamours over herself to walk back into some towns…none of those things show Yennefer’s true mettle.</p><p>How she can sever a spinal column with the closing of her fist, how she can incinerate an entire enemy army with the rage in her fingertips. <em> How you can make someone shun you completely because you’re in love with them. </em> Yennefer glowers at the last one. Aside from that, the others are proof of her abilities. <em> I’m good at making things die. </em></p><p>Suddenly aware of the stark silence of the group of men, she harangues them until they all scatter and Yennefer is left with the bog witch of Temeria. </p><p>“You’re an awfully long way from home,” Yennefer grumbles as the men disperse.</p><p> “The bog is my home but I’m not confined to it.” Yennefer watches her take a sip. </p><p>“So how does one of the likes of you end up in Skellige?” Yennefer leans against the bar and looks out at the group she drove off. While they’d like to appear disinterested, she knows they’re eavesdropping anyway. </p><p>“Only the isles of Skellige could provide me that which I need,” is the cryptic response. “For the spell you’re going to want me to conduct.” Yennefer can’t hold in her snort of absolute contempt. “Scoff all you want, but the visions told me of this moment. Of you. Of what I’d need.”</p><p>Yennefer can stand it no more, so she grabs the woman roughly under an arm and proceeds to half drag, half carry her out the door of the <em> Arinbjorn. </em> If the woman is at all surprised by the swift departure from inside, she doesn’t look it. </p><p>“Leave, and that is the kindest way I can put it. The fact those men didn’t harass you any more than they did—or worse—makes you one lucky lady. Unless you’re Skellige, there’s nothing here for you anyway.” </p><p>Yennefer makes to leave. “Then why are you here?” She stops. Turns. The woman is so damn infuriating. </p><p>“Because I belong nowhere,” Yennefer admits. Not anymore. Maybe at one point in time but the concept of home, like Yennefer’s dreams, has disappeared as well.</p><p>“Something you’d like to change, among other things,” the woman muses. </p><p>Yennefer sighs. “There is no changing what’s been done.” Yennefer spins a third time to leave, finally to rid herself of the growing headache that has nothing to do with ale. <em> I’m not even drunk anymore.  </em></p><p>“You will find me again. For the spell. I have access to the past, a way for you to rewrite your own tale!”</p><p>Yennefer shoves her fingers in her ears. She ignores something that sounds suspiciously like Tissaia de Vries. </p><p>
  <em> Two Days Earlier </em>
</p><p>She’s being dramatic, she knows, but the run-in with the old bog witch has put a damper on her already sopping mood. So, Yennefer spends the day inside, bent to not have another encounter with the woman whose lips she should have melded shut the second they uttered the last thing they did. </p><p>Yennefer tosses and turns at first when the flooding back of yesterday’s events happen as she wakes. She tries to push them away, truly, but they’ll not let her rest, so she trades sleep for pacing.</p><p>How dare that woman. How <em> dare </em> she. Presuming to know Yennefer’s life, when all she just wanted was a few minutes alone to drink her thoughts away. To not have to think about Sodden, to not have to listen to the repetition of what she was told departing a medical tent with tears in her eyes. </p><p>That had been six months ago. A blip in the life of a sorceress. However, the longest and most aching stretch of time Yennefer has ever had to live through. She sniffs, her nose watery. An annoyance, an effect. She can’t let this happen again.</p><p>When pacing doesn’t work, she takes to drinking, working on the stupor she was going for yesterday. Today’s fare though is Cintran Faro, a sweet concoction favored by the seamen of the country. In the past however. Cintra exists no more, as very little of their drink does either, Yennefer assumes. </p><p>Not that she had any grand emotions toward Calanthe or Eist. Where their little prize of a granddaughter is is anyone’s guess too. Another country led to ruins by a too proud ruler who shouldn’t have been so stubborn. Now she and her counterpart lie in shallow graves somewhere, their country claimed by another full of tyrants and then abandoned again. Now Cintra awaits someone to return it to its glory once again, but that granddaughter hasn’t popped up in the last half year either. </p><p>If she were in a particular mood, she might just head east to the mountains of Kaedwen, seek out Kaer Morhen and what lies inside. But she’s of no mind to do that either, her parting with the White Wolf fraught with just as much tension and anger as the last person she left behind. </p><p>No, staying in Skellige will have to do. </p><p>The more she drinks, the more she finds the idea sufficient. Even if the old bog witch is out there, yammering on about foreshadowings and whatnot, Yennefer feels the compulsion to stay put. </p><p>When she’s well and drunk, she feels her body heat up, mind going down paths she’d rather not go. She decides the only way to take care of both problems seems to be fairly obvious. </p><p>Her hand becomes tucked, another space growing darker by the days. Now, it only knows Yennefer and some (most) times, she cannot be enough for herself. The same feeling takes root after about a half hour of touches, shoving her mind into nothingness. </p><p>Even though her heart aches, the second she thinks of who would take away the pain, who could change everything, her body responds in kind. Yennefer feels guilty hanging on to something she can never have, pathetic for going back to the “could-have-beens.”</p><p>In her mind's eye, she can make out the perfectly shaped eyebrows, pale eyes the color of glacial ice, lines between brows Yennefer has always wanted to smooth away with her thumb but never had the courage to do so. And those lips, Yennefer knows would be her end. The soft pink of them simply everywhere. </p><p>She fights against the heartache because it’s the same fantasy she’s gone back to since Rinde. And after what happened six months ago, it should have nulled and voided it completely. But that’s the thing about mystery, of imagining something that seems impossible: it can be twisted any way to suit the one wondering.</p><p>The spirit does little to lift her own, the feeling it creates not warm and hazy but something else less comforting. Soon, Yennefer cannot distinguish between her pleasure nor her anguish because they both seem entwined. </p><p>A cry rings out (from her mind and heart or where her hand stills, she’s not sure). In the haze, she realizes her pillow is wet when she’s spent some time on her side, curled up. </p><p>Yennefer drifts eventually into another dreamless sleep. Her thoughts, mercifully, stay in the waking world. </p><p>
  <em> One Day Earlier </em>
</p><p>She wakes with what feels like a mouth full of sand and an incessant pressing against the temples of her skull. Rising proves difficult so she sits on the edge of the bed, watching the world swirl a bit. </p><p>Oh.</p><p>Right. Last night. She sighs, remembering. </p><p>There had been too much of a lot of different things and it had proved to be a potent combination in Yennefer making a lot of bad decisions. A twinge from below agrees and she feels even more despondent than she did.</p><p>She cannot keep beating herself up over what’s happened. She left Thanedd to start over, not roll around in the absence of it every single day she’s alive. Growling, she strips off her gown and tosses it away. </p><p>A wooden tub sits off to the side and rather than call for the innkeeper's wife to fill it, Yennefer conjures hot water and sinks into it. Sadly, the area of it is too small to submerge in but she dangles her legs over the top and covers up to her shoulders, feeling the water slosh.</p><p>What had the witch said? Something about rewriting her tale? </p><p>“Ludicrous,” Yennefer mumbles, creating ripples in the water as her lips move. </p><p>She knows of every kind of magic there is and accessing the past or future is not something that’s possible. And as the woman said, there are no other realities—just this one. </p><p>But if she could, would she go back and do it differently? The idea seems trivial. Of course, she would. Every single person alive would. So why is Yennefer special? Why has she been sought out by a bog witch incredibly far from home who had addressed her by name?</p><p>Yennefer is not anything if not curious, so she finds an agitated sound coming from her and hitting the air. The bath is doing little to calm her, already worked into umbrage again, so she rises and dresses. She can’t stay cooped up anymore. She’s not built for it, so she decides to roam the town. </p><p>She leaves the <em> New Port </em>, a second home by now, flicking a wrist at Jonas as she leaves. Once outside, she makes her way through town. </p><p>Deciding to avoid the taverns and other places her headache would not do well in, she spends some time at the herbalist. It’s dark and earthy, the quiet reprieve her throbbing brain needs. She leaves with a pouch of ingredients to rid herself of the hangover. </p><p>Before she knows it, she’s sitting under the sacred oak and ritual site, Gedyneith. It’s absent of anyone this early, so Yennefer decides to sit awhile. </p><p>Gazing off into the distance, she scans the trees and paths leading up to the hill. Leaning back against the bark of the oak, she removes the pouch and gathers some herbs in her hand, balling them together and putting a pinch between her cheek and gums.</p><p>The medicinal flavor releases and she feels the throbbing ease to a dull ache. Hopefully, it will rid her of her poor decision of too much drink very soon. </p><p>But what of the other poor decisions she’s made? Those are not so easily dealt with. Yennefer sighs. How could she even change them anyway? There are too many to pinpoint, so who knows what Yennefer might encounter anyway. </p><p>She finds her hand curling in the dirt, drawing out the small body, the beak, the ruffle of feathers. The color of the soil is not far off the mark on the color, but there need to be large swaths of white too. </p><p>The birds used to be everywhere and Yennefer can still remember their tittering trills, fast birdsong overtaking a canopy. Only now, they’re more sparse. It’s been years since she’s seen one. <em> Well, other than the one that lives in my heart.  </em></p><p>A different type of song, that one holds. Angrily, Yennefer swipes away the picture she’s drawn and dusts her hands off on her leather breeches. </p><p>She misses the things she used to know. Her whole life, she’s been running from the existence she’s created but now that there’s nowhere left to go, she sees her life for what it’s truly been. </p><p>There are moments, beautiful ones, where Yennefer can drift back to and remember feeling absolute contentment. Happy, she knows it now for what it is. While few and far between, she’d trade her entire existence just to go back and relive them again.</p><p>That’s when the truth lances hard. She knows that she wants what the bog witch is offering. That wiping her life of her mistakes or at least trying to fix even a portion of the ones she’s made is worth more to Yennefer than all the coin in the world. </p><p>She stands, again brushing off the natural elements that have come to stick to her from her perch beneath the tree. Walking down the hill, she leaves the space of Gedyneith and the skylark she’d drawn in the dirt. </p><p>It doesn’t take long to find who she’s looking for. For as well known as Yennefer has come to be in Skellige, the outsider’s whereabouts are even more well known. </p><p>Before Yennefer can even bring a fist to the door of the small lean-to, the door opens, and she steps back while squaring her shoulders. She expects a goad, anything to repay her for the shit manners she extended three days ago. </p><p>That never comes, only this: “I’ve been expecting you. I’m glad you’re finally here.”</p><p>“I know. I wish I could say the same,” Yennefer mutters and the door closes. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Vengerberg, The Stone Trials, and Thought Transference</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s nothing more than a shack as Yennefer looks around. The room is wide but there is little furnishing it: a makeshift bed that looks more like a cot, a long table that is horribly out of place and more suited for a tavern.</p><p>“Nice accommodations,” Yennefer huffs and places her hands on her hips.</p><p>“I’m a little shocked you held out three days,” the bog witch smiles, her face jestful. “Going by your reputation, I’d figured you’d have followed me out of the <em> Arinbjorn.” </em></p><p>Something about that raises Yennefer’s hackles again. This woman doesn’t know her, even if she’s heard stories. Word of mouth is little when it comes to the full scope of Yennefer’s being. Before, she relished the stories being told of her throughout the land. Now, she finds them more of an annoyance, giving people a false sense of knowing her. </p><p>“So how does this work?” Yennefer looks around. “Do you wave your hands around, do a dance, sacrifice some sort of animal to the gods?” She feels pleased with herself, smiles at her impudence. </p><p>“You look me in the face and make jokes when you’re the one whose life has provided you with enough disquiet to bring you to me,” the bog witch shakes her head. </p><p>Yennefer isn’t sure about premonitions or visions. She’s been some dark places, even darker inside of herself. That being said, she’s never entertained what the bog witch is suggesting. <em> You hadn’t used fire magic before either. </em></p><p>Yennefer folds a little and concedes some ground. “Fine, I’ve messed up a lot.” She looks around again, anywhere other than the scrutiny of the witch’s face, whom she still doesn’t even know her name. She should really ask.</p><p>“Where is the root of the mistakes?” She walks forward, places a hand on Yennefer’s chest. “Where does your restlessness reside in here?”</p><p>Yennefer doesn’t want to lend the information but if she’s ever to move past what’s atrophied, she must talk to <em> someone </em> about what’s happened. </p><p>“I told someone I loved them. I don’t think they trust me enough to love me back,” Yennefer whispers. “Because of the stories you’ve heard of me. Because of the way I am.”</p><p>Instead of hurting to admit, the truth exiting her dispels some of the weight as if it has been taken off. Not that her chest feels magically free of pain but definitely not as compressed. </p><p>“Tell me more.”</p><p>What’s left to say? Yennefer doesn’t know how much more to give and she sits on the long table. She crosses her arms and legs, stacking her boots atop one another. </p><p>“I met her long ago when I was but a child still. I may have looked like a young woman but my mind was still lacking maturity.” A smile tugs. “I hated her at first. For taking me away from my life even though it was shit. For being cold most of the time. I always wondered if it was just me. If I disgusted or annoyed her.</p><p>“I know I did the latter, but I’ve always wondered about the other. But then there would be these shimmers of something else, something that would resemble care. I think I got lost in it, so much so that I started to fall for her. I loved her before I could process what I’d done.”</p><p>The bog witch says nothing but sits and begins piling up some herbs and other things together while Yennefer talks. She doesn’t know if that’s a sign to stop, but she feels compelled to keep going. </p><p>“She asked me to go into battle. I didn’t give a shit about the politics, but I wanted to protect her. I couldn’t let her go alone. And she almost died. So did I. I burned a whole army for her. I fought for her, for us.” Yennefer watches as the woman’s pestle comes to a rest.</p><p>“So the rumors are true. You are the scorcher of soldiers.”</p><p>Yennefer sniffs, not sure what to feel. “We do things for the people we love that defy explanation.” Yennefer thinks. “Which I told her as she lay recovering.” She can’t help but shrug, angry again. Beaten raw by the outright dismissal. “ ‘There is no ‘us’ Yennefer and I don’t foresee how there ever could be.’ Those are the last words she said to me before I fled that medical tent at Sodden. I couldn’t deal with them.”</p><p>The bog witch rises now, placing a hand on Yennefer again and forcing her to lie on the long table. Yennefer can smell something that the woman’s mixed up but she had been so lost in her story, she’s failed to pay attention to the ingredients. </p><p>She looks up into deep brown eyes and at that scraggly gray hair. The necklace swings, making a tinkling noise as the woman moves. “Why are you helping me?” It shoots out of Yennefer’s mouth. </p><p>“I don’t get many chances to practice this spell. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this one. Maybe I want to see if I’ve still got it. Maybe I feel the slightest bit of empathy for you. For who hasn’t been in love at one point and had it destroy their heart?” The woman alludes to some part of her own story, a past where her own troubles lie. </p><p>“I don’t want to live life without her,” Yennefer admits quietly, crossing her arms over her breasts. She swallows thickly. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Then she still would be in my life. Not the way I want her but not completely gone either.”</p><p>A foul-smelling paste is rubbed at her temples, along the set of her jaw. The woman doesn’t even ask as she unties the strings that lace on Yennefer’s blouse and yanks it open to expose her sternum. </p><p>“I can’t guarantee this will work. You know how fickle magic can be.”</p><p>“And here I thought you were so sure of your abilities in the tavern the other day,” Yennefer snaps. She doesn’t know why. It’s not like she thinks anything will come of this. In fact, she feels quite foolish. </p><p>The table is shoddy and raised wood is digging into the flesh of her hands. Even through the areas that are covered, she can feel pokes and is that mandrake she smells? Ergot? What in the actual fuck has she agreed to? Surely not…</p><p>“Are you drugging me?” Yennefer tries to sit up but is pushed back down. </p><p>“Not exactly but not a total ‘no’ either.” The bog witch starts muttering words Yennefer has never heard. </p><p>“What if it doesn’t work?” Which she fully expects. The other woman looks perturbed finally. </p><p>The challenge of it is, what if it does? Yennefer isn’t sure what to expect, but the life she’s living has run its course. She’s said as much before. Part of her knows she should be dead, but here she lies on a rickety table in a crappy building in Skellige with gods knows what on her face and a woman uttering words she’s never heard. </p><p>Somehow, her eyes close and her body doesn’t feel like her own anymore. She tries to claw herself back awake, but it’s too late. Whatever magic has been done is taking hold and Yennefer can’t even speak out a spell of her own to combat it, the force of it so heavy so as not to escape. </p><p>She thinks maybe she frowns as a voice stabs into her brain, buries to the hilt in every place that hurts. Yennefer writhes and sees her face as clearly as if she were right in front of her, even though Yennefer knows she’s not. </p><p>Like a wisp of smoke, she turns and begins to float away. Yennefer lunges forward, her fingers brushing against the wound brown locks of her hair. She paws at empty air and stares down at her empty hand. Glancing back up, Yennefer sees her—now very far away. </p><p>“Tissaia!” she screams and everything goes black. </p><p>——-//——-</p><p>She bolts upright and immediately folds over, the pain searing to the point to steal her breath away. When Yennefer catches air back into her lungs, she unscrews her eyes. </p><p>Her face is stuck to a bunch of hay and the smell of manure permeates her nose. Her eyes go wide as she realizes the phantom ache in her jaw and her hands shoot out to claw at her face and back.</p><p>No, fuck, <em> no </em>. She’d cry if she had anything left to give emotionally. </p><p>This isn’t what she agreed to, what was being offered. She screams and punches the ground over and over again. The hay flies and mud splatters up in her face. In a flurry, she works harder than she’s had to in decades to get off the ground.</p><p>There is no straightening her spine. She’s disfigured again, back in Vengerberg from the looks of it. Also, she knows this barn. She grabs a pail in her rage, full of pig slop. If she’s to start doing things differently, she has every intention of bringing the metal across that pompous ass’s face.</p><p>Just as she’s making her way into the main yard, Yennefer is blindsided by him and in the muck again. He doesn’t fight her because she’s run her mouth off again, instead shoved down for the amusement of it, it seems. </p><p>“You piece of…”</p><p>“How much for a pig?” </p><p>Yennefer about gives herself whiplash at the voice. She winces but then loses all the air in her lungs because there <em> she </em> is again, standing with her authoritative stature even though she’s had to hop from her cart, not able to step right out without falling on her face. </p><p>A laugh wants to rip out of Yennefer’s throat because somehow, she’s in her old fucking life again, but she remembers why she ran away from the last one. The reason is standing in front of her, about to purchase her again. She can almost hear her own lips saying “I’ll not go” once more.</p><p>
  <em> Respond differently.  </em>
</p><p>If she’s really here, meaning to make new choices, she’s got to not put her foot in the same print. This makes her scrabble to her feet as best she can, gnarled back be damned, and practically sprint toward Tissaia.</p><p>The woman’s eyes go wide as Yennefer approaches like a wild animal. It even causes her to take a cautionary step back. </p><p>Yennefer thinks there are screams behind her. It really is a shame that she didn’t get to clock the man who would have sold her for half the price of a pig again nor tell her mother of her ire at not defending her more vehemently. </p><p>Tissaia recoils a bit when Yennefer grabs her arm and Yennefer can feel the chaos stroked to burning inside the woman (even though she used to not know what it felt like, especially back to when this is). But Tissaia holds back from zapping her across the yard. Not wanting to prove Yennefer’s mother right and reveal how on the mark ‘witch’ actually is. </p><p>“Let’s skip the unpleasantries. I’ll go with you.” Yennefer practically drags her back to her cart.</p><p>When they reach it, Tissaia finally does yank away and glares hard at Yennefer who flops unceremoniously into the back. </p><p>Last time, she had to be hogtied and dragged. Oddly fitting, considering that’s what she’d been purchased as. </p><p>Now, she’s screwed over the people still standing on the porch and the one pulling herself to sit in the bench seat of being able to own Yennefer. There’s a smug sense of satisfaction that she’s been in this replay of her past for only a little while and she’s already managed to change something. A smile flickers but then she loses it.</p><p>This is in no way enough to get the outcome she wants. Not enough to get Tissaia back in the present or the future. Yennefer sags a bit, knowing how the rest of the journey goes. </p><p>(Tisssia will drive them to the edge of Vengerberg, out of the way of prying eyes. She will return the cart and pay a hefty sum for the farmer to not utter a word of her presence as she conjures a portal to Aretuza. This time, Yennefer won’t be knocked out as she’s thrown into it. She also won’t fight Tissaia every step of the way when they get there)</p><p>Tissaia doesn’t speak another word to her, pointedly ignoring Yennefer’s eagerness to follow. She snaps the reins and the cart jolts forward. The first part of retracing the past begins. </p><p>Everything proceeds mostly how she remembers, with some minor changes. When they stride through the halls of Aretuza and Tissaia unlocks the door to Yennefer’s room, Yennefer stares her down as she walks through it. </p><p>There’s but a split second of holding Tissaia’s look before the rectoress is throwing the door shut and locking Yennefer in. All of it makes Yennefer roll her eyes. The edge of Yennefer’s love for the woman is filed down a bit as she is confronted with how difficult it’s been to manifest feelings despite the downright callous way Tissaia has treated her sometimes. </p><p>Carrying her tired and broken body to her bed, she falls into it with the lack of grace she always had in her youth. She drums her fingers on the mattress, exhausted yet wired at seeing Tissaia again after a six-month break.</p><p>But not the one that she’s gone through years of back and forth. Not the one who put her hand on her cheek and made her heart crack open on a battlefield with death all around. This is the same woman she encountered all those years ago. The impenetrable fortress that nothing gets through. </p><p>Yennefer raises her head, eyes lifting to the foggy mirror and melting wax of the candles. The basin sits ominously empty, waiting to be filled. <em> Not with water.  </em></p><p>She turns her head and faces the other way. Tomorrow begins her life again. Another chance to turn it all around. Another chance to fall in love with Tissaia all over again.</p><p>——-//——-</p><p>It’s barely light out when something opens her eyes. She’s still face planted to the bed and she scrabbles up, knowing what happens next. Standing, she goes to stand in front of the door and puts her hands behind her back and her head down.</p><p>No part of her expected to be in possession of her memories and for having them, she’s very grateful. Otherwise, having a chance of the do-over would not matter. The same mistakes could happen once more. </p><p>Yennefer straightens when she hears the key in the lock and throws her shoulders back. (She has not missed this—being practically cripple—but if the end result gains her the woman walking through the door, she’ll keep her askew jaw and warped spine forever)</p><p>Tissaia startles at seeing Yennefer upright and deferent. This is the moment when they really began, Tissaia chastising her hasty decision and affirming that no one would miss her if she died.</p><p><em> Probably still the same after eighty years too, </em>Yennefer thinks. But she’s apt to change that. There’s something, a remnant, buried so deep in Tissaia that she assumes the woman doesn’t know of it. Or, if she does, she pushes it so deep that she can forget it exists. It’s that sliver of hope that’s brought her here. She’s not of any mind to choke it out completely. </p><p>“Good morning, Rectoress,” Yennefer greets mannerly. <em> Just like Tissaia likes. </em>It lasts all of a few exchanges before it’s unraveling like before. </p><p>“I’m sure you found your accommodations satisfactory considering you practically lived in a pigpen, so I would agree the morning is ‘good.’” Tissaia holds not even a hint of warmth on her face. </p><p>Yennefer turns a little in on herself, grumpy. “It’s a good thing I’m used to cold nights too, otherwise the frigidness radiating off of you would have been enough to change the trajectory of my morning.” </p><p>The amount of pride Yennefer feels in herself is staggering. It was a lot to say, especially with the way her jaw is set and she’s forgotten how hard it was to say more than a few simple words without its ache. It’s worth it because Tissaia looks furious.</p><p>“I’m not here to coddle you into being a sorceress,” Tissaia snaps. “I’m here to teach you the gift and the art of chaos so that it doesn’t consume you.” </p><p>Yennefer follows her gaze to the intact mirror and smiles. An eyebrow raises too and she hooks a thumb back to the object. “What, did you think I’d give up so easily?”</p><p>“You wouldn’t be the first, Piglet, and certainly not the last,” Tissaia bites out. <em> Okay, so we’re back here again. </em>Yennefer waits. “You would not believe how many girls I’ve had to pull back from the brink of their own self-destructive ideals.”</p><p>There’s a fine irony to this because Tissaia had, in fact, done that once upon a time for Yennefer too. At no juncture did she imagine a life grander than that pig farm and when Tissaia was toting her off to one, she lacked the foresight to see it. </p><p>“They’re weak,” Yennefer shrugs. She was at one point in time. It’s not so much a disgusted admission but a truthful one. She’s not always been the strongest in her life. As if to remind her, her back sends a radiating pain downward. </p><p>“Then let’s test your strength as well. Meet me in ten minutes in the main classroom. Don’t be late or don’t bother coming at all.” </p><p>Yennefer raises a finger to tell Tissaia something witty and lecherous, but the woman is out the door before words can even be formed. Waiting for only a beat, she follows—only to run directly into Tissaia’s brick wall of a form.</p><p>She had been so preoccupied with catching Tissaia off guard that she has been herself: there had been an absence of footsteps, meaning Tissaia never truly left. </p><p>They both hold frowns and furrowed brows and the entire scene must look tense because neither is backing down.</p><p>Tissaia looks at her from her head to toes. “Most girls come in with tears in their eyes and fear bending their chaos to warbles. Yet here you are, disfigured and more eager than anyone I’ve seen in probably a hundred years.”</p><p>Her tone is skeptical and rightfully so. Perhaps Yennefer should have laid off slightly on her willingness to be back in Aretuza. While she can’t imagine Sabrina cowering in her room at the moment, (she knows they will meet again promptly) she remembers the faces of the girls she’s about to see. Hardly one of them held confidence.</p><p>She can’t say she’s ready to begin worming her way into Tissaia’s heart. Filling Tissaia full of hot air about the school’s esteem or her reputation at teaching doesn’t seem the way to go either.</p><p>“I want to be the best,” Yennefer shrugs. “That isn’t possible twiddling my thumbs in my room.”</p><p>She can’t twiddle her thumbs anyway, stupid back impeding the movement of her left side. But what she’s said is the truth and always has been. It seems to appease Tissaia who sniffs at the remark and does retreat. </p><p>The stone trial is one Yennefer isn’t exactly keen on repeating. The humiliation she’d felt all those years ago rams its head as she stares at the podium in front of her, the jagged rock and delicate flower lying in wait.</p><p>She stares at it in fixation, completely missing Tissaia’s speech. After all, she’s heard it before. </p><p>Tissaia indicates they all may begin trying to lift the rock but Yennefer refrains. She also knows how this goes. Plus the eagerness she’d felt before has puddled at her feet. What if she fails a second time?</p><p>As Fringilla’s hand withers (again), Yennefer can’t move her eyes off of the rock. This time, she’s not hacked at her wrists. This time, she’s got energy and strength. Shouldn’t she be able to lift it right off the bat since she knows how chaos works?</p><p>The thought crashes as she notices Tissaia standing in front of her, watching like a hawk. “Lift your stone, Piglet.” She commands it loud and in the dead silence of the room. </p><p>Yennefer jerks her attention around the area to see every pair of eyes looking at her. Hags, all of them. Even Sabrina. She’ll grow older and stab Yennefer in the gut someday and smile while she does it. Yennefer broods. <em> But not if I can change that too.  </em></p><p>Sodden is but a niggling thought at the back of her mind with this staring her in the face. Tissaia’s doesn’t look impatient like Yennefer expected, but she also doesn’t hold the weird break into empathy either, from when she tried and couldn’t get it, the speech coming about the loss of blood. </p><p><em> Oh, fuck it </em>, Yennefer barrels ahead and speaks the words in Elder. </p><p>And oh, fuck. Her stone does not move. She tries again. Nothing. With each uttering, Yennefer is becoming more frantic. Like before. She shuts her eyes, centers herself, and calms her chaos. She speaks the words with the courage of Yennefer of Vengerberg, the most powerful mage on the continent. </p><p>And it lifts. She feels it rather than sees it. Instead of fluttering her eyes open, she does so with a snap and stares directly into Tissaia’s blue, not even bothering to look at the levitating stone or the crisp flowers in her hand. </p><p>“Are you satisfied?” Yennefer whispers out, too low for the other girls to hear. </p><p>She’d brush against Tissaia’s mind if she knew she wouldn’t get knocked back into the wall. How she would love to know what the woman is feeling. </p><p>Her lips curl in a smile and she moves her eyes to look rather bored at the stone before gliding her gaze back to Tissaia and tossing the ruined stem to the edge of the podium and letting the rock hit with its own clattering thud.</p><p>Rage burns in Tissaia’s eyes. Yennefer backpedals a bit. It’s clear she’s still messing up when Tissaia groans out in disgust and walks away.</p><p>Yennefer leans over her podium and sighs. She’d meant to make Tissaia see that she wasn’t a lost cause, that she wasn’t a pathetically broken girl from a pig farm. </p><p>She knows how the tale ends, or at least where it left off. But as of right now, she feels as unsure of herself as she did back when this happened the first time. When she finally lifts her head, Tissaia is watching her again. </p><p>——-//——-</p><p>Tissaia doesn’t speak to her again directly after Yennefer’s little scene with the stone. But Yennefer feels her eyes tracking to her now and again during their lessons.</p><p>The next test that has Yennefer shuffling from her chamber with the other girls is the thought transference exercise. Wounded pride aside, Yennefer remembers the absolute ass she made of herself when she lied and said Anica was afraid of snakes. </p><p>Knowing where Anica winds up, Yennefer hangs back until everyone is paired—except her. This has the desired effect in that Tissaia looks perturbed at the lack of balance. She’s about to make a group of three (Yennefer has always hated group work) when Yennefer suggests something else altogether.</p><p>“Since we’ve an uneven number and I’ve not got a partner, I suppose I could pair with you.” She feels the air leave the room as every girl in the chamber sucks in a breath and jerks their heads to see the archmistresses’s reaction. </p><p>It’s plain to see that Tissaia wants to say no. Yennefer has done little to endear the woman to her since she arrived back at Aretuza, but maybe this is another one of those chances like the bog witch mentioned. With a commanding finger pointed down to the floor, the problem is solved.</p><p>Everyone settles and Yennefer watches as Tissaia bends her legs sideways and swipes her dress over her legs. Once she’s rearranged herself, she looks at Yennefer with a rather disdainful face.</p><p>“You’ll never get it.” Tissaia places a hand on her bent leg and places another beside her on the floor. “My greatest fear.”</p><p>There are several ways this could work itself out. Wildly, Yennefer’s fear hasn’t changed in eighty years. </p><p>She’s been remade, been beautiful. There have been snippets of care, of something resembling deeper emotion. But not love. Not since this moment here and certainly not before it. And gods, has she tried. </p><p>Point in case being the person in front of her. She’d tried after Sodden. Tissaia’s rebuff has sent here though. </p><p>There’s no way that Tissaia is going to let Yennefer in, not this soon anyway. Nor does she want to show her hand just yet, something to keep stashed very far back. So she decides to wait it out, making it appear that she’s incapable of pulling anything out of her. </p><p>“You’re afraid of not being good enough.” Yennefer’s surprise must wash over her, but Tissaia only looks bored as she says it. “Of how you never will be.” </p><p>“That obvious, huh?” Yennefer says quietly. She could blurt out what she’s holding back, but she sits on it still. Tissaia isn’t ready to hear what she has to say. She concedes to her. “Well done, Rectoress.”</p><p>Tissaia casts her eyes to Yennefer from adjusting the hem of her dress. If it were possible for blue eyes to darken, Yennefer is sure they would. Instead, they look electric blue. </p><p>Yennefer severs their gazes and creates her own space between them. She’s going to sit a while longer before making an attempt to guess Tissaia’s fear. It’s much too early to do so.</p><p>Nobody moves for hours. As it passes, Yennefer takes time to reacquaint herself with Tissaia’s physical features. </p><p>Yennefer is amused by her hairstyle this far back into the past. She’d never really paid much mind to the plastered down chignon and the weird middle part. She decides she doesn’t like it much because it makes Tissaia look more severe than she really is. As do the high collars, one such item on her today. </p><p>She shuffles a bit and sees Tissaia quirk an eyebrow. The floor is doing Yennefer zero favors because her posture is garbage anyway, but she will not give up. Letting a sigh escape, she goes back to observing. </p><p>The rectoress’s eyebrows are annoyingly perfect, if somewhat judgemental more often than not. So much so that two lines have permanently formed between Tissaia’s brows. Frowning will do that to a person though.</p><p>It’s her eyes, Yennefer thinks, that she fell for first. The ice-like quality to them had her freezing, not able to move away from the piercing gaze. Yennefer skirts over looking at the soft pink of her lips and wandering into imagination. A blush would surely form and she cannot have that. </p><p>Every other place she travels warms her from within little by little. It’s sitting inside of a good memory, even if Tissaia finds her troublesome at best and burdensome at worse. She closes her eyes and basks in the contentment she feels, to be sitting this close to the woman who once stole her heart.</p><p>“What are you smiling at, Piglet?”</p><p>Her voice cuts like a knife and Yennefer’s eyes pop open. Tissaia awaits an answer, so Yennefer must give one. “I think I’ve got it.”</p><p>“Got what?”</p><p>Yennefer works her jaw, then uses her pointer finger to shove a bit of the fabric on her frock away from her foot. “You’re afraid.” It’s a generic beginning.</p><p>Tissaia is noncommittal. Maybe thinking Yennefer is about to do some grand magic trick of pulling a lie from her arse. <em> Here goes nothing </em>…</p><p>She looks around at the other girls in various levels of concentration. She scoots forward a bit and then leans in. “It’s not of normal, trivial things though. Not snakes or spiders or the wayward creatures lurking the land. Your fear is deep, hidden.”</p><p>Again, a lot to say. Her jaw reminds her. She has to press on, however. </p><p>“You don’t care about much now—order, control, duty, honor. But you’re afraid you will.” Tissaia is burning holes through Yennefer, yet her face remains impassive. Yennefer knows her tell though. “You’re afraid to lose control at all.”</p><p>The Rectoress is well on her way to bothered now, that look of impassivity falling away. Her own jaw sets and her nostrils flare. “You circle the edges of truth, Piglet.”</p><p>“You’re afraid of someone cracking that—someday,” Yennefer continues. “You don’t know of love, not the true kind anyway. But someday, you will get close to it, to feeling it. You won’t know how to deal, so you’ll retreat, just like you’ve always done.” </p><p>By this point, she’s rendered Tissaia mute. If looks could kill, Yennefer would be dead. </p><p>She didn’t have to pry this from Tissaia’s mind to know it’s true. Yennefer has witnessed it firsthand. She should back down, really, but she’s never been good at that, so she presses on. </p><p>“Which leads me to your true fear: even though you’re terrified of feeling love, what’s even more staggering is that someone might feel it for you. And you won’t have a clue how to act because life hasn’t thrown that at you in hundreds of years.</p><p>“But it’s coming, Rectoress, and you’ll be so lost inside yourself that you’ll end up an old woman, alone and unloved. Not even a dog ear in the annals of life. An afterthought.” Heat licks at her words and she’s falling into the too new hurt of what Tissaia has caused. “The world will forget you because you forgot the world.”</p><p>Tissaia’s mouth hangs open now, Yennefer guesses because her gamble has proven correct. Or that she’s so shocked Yennefer has the gall to come at her in the way she just has. </p><p>“The...the session is dismissed,” Tissaia actually stammers. Suddenly, Yennefer finds herself shocked. She jumps when Tissaia spins wildly and angrily. “That means you too, Piglet.”</p><p>For a second time, Yennefer is locked in her room. The clang of the metal key in the door makes Yennefer’s heartache evermore. Supper does not come either.</p><p>She wishes she could say that she is surprised, but this is essentially how last time began too. While Yennefer has worked to lift the stone, to not placate Tissaia with a lie to appear strong, she’s also not succeeded with meeting Tissaia’s requirements either. </p><p>Lifting the stone had been a child’s test of magic, but Yennefer should have eased off during the thought transference. Her own vulnerabilities have come through into whatever this is and she’s not doing it any better than the last time. </p><p>So, wait...then why is she still here? Shouldn’t she have woken up by now? Why is she still stuck in this dream if she’s not done one single thing right? Unless...she has.</p><p>Something flickers, deep. Not quite hope but something akin to it. Yennefer feels the shroud of her own dejectedness being pulled away. She’s been looking at this all wrong, pulled by old hurts and new ones. </p><p>She will show Tissaia she is worthy of the love the woman never gave her, that Yennefer never had an outlet to send her own to. It’s now or never. This is her last stand to earn the heart of Tissaia de Vries.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Lightning in a Bottle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>After the thought transference trial, Yennefer backs off. Tries to become the model student she never was. Pushing Tissaia had been wrong and Yennefer learned that rather quickly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While it had been enough to get Tissaia’s attention, it had done little to warm her heart. So Yennefer has taken to behaving the way she should, not exactly being so submissive as to end up in the eel pit but not working Tissaia into an angry strut either. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Days pass and she goes through the motions of “learning” magic she already knows. She tries to be rapt with attention, studious enough. Before, there had been the lovely little distraction of Istredd, but that complication seems absent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sits and ponders a while, shifts to deal with the pain that never goes away from her deformities. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I can’t wait until my enchantment.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Only what if it never comes? Surely the bog witch didn’t send her back to relive her life only to turn into an eel. The thoughts propel her through the classes and various activities Tissaia puts them through. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>While she’d love to get close to Tissaia again, to spend a bit of alone time with her, she also knows that could prove dangerous too. There had been a room full of girls last time she had Tissaia to herself and she had yanked her greatest fear out in the open.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer supposes her face gets too much of a glazed-over look because one night at the lights-out bidding, Tissaia catches Yennefer by the arm before she is locked in her room. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Piglet, wait.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer stills immediately. She looks where Tissaia has touched her and burns without sound. The yelp she wants to let go is stifled. They both look where Tissaia’s fingers are wrapped and then back into one another’s eyes. Something flares. Tissaia snatches back her hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is it, Rectoress?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer wishes she could tell Tissaia of the life they’ve both lived, the way they’ve worked themselves through the hatred and pain, back around to it again. Of what they’ve become to one another. Not this but something much more and less at the same time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia leans in, her voice a whisper. “Tonight, the lightning trials will commence.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer knows but looks surprised anyway. This did not happen last time. That’s why it is easy to conjure the look. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why are you telling me this?” Yennefer genuinely wants to know. As an afterthought, “You do not like me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Liking you has nothing to do with you succeeding. You’ve been brash and arrogant,” Tissaia bites out, shakes her head. Her hands go to her front, locking together, and she sighs. “But I’ve seen you pulling back. That eagerness you first started with…” She looks at Yennefer now. “It’s gone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I seemed to displease you,” Yennefer begins. The words are ridiculous because she’s been upsetting Tissaia her entire life. “So I’ve tried to do as you ask.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia steps closer and Yennefer fights against the feeling of having her near. “There are mages like Sabrina who ignore their emotions. She will succeed because she lacks the capacity to do anything but.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer wants to roll her eyes. Aren’t things supposed to be changing? Yet here she is getting the same speech about her own pathetic abilities. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you’ve stopped me to point out my failures? I’ve risen to every task you’ve asked. I may have taken a minute to lift my stone and water bending is bullshit anyway.” Yennefer waves off. “I’ve never been able to do it well, if at all, and I’ve never put much stock in it anyway.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean ‘never?’ Have you been schooled in such outside of these walls?” Tissaia is skeptical and rightfully so. Yennefer has let something slip. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not a failure, Rectoress. I’m not a failure. And to think I would go through life having you make me feel such.” Yennefer lets out a laugh, one of no levity. “No matter what happens tonight, I’ll be a sorceress. Maybe just not the one you would have me be.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer doesn’t want to do this, but she has also gone through one life feeling like shit. If she doesn’t win Tissaia, maybe she can go through this one with her head crooked but held as high as she can. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You want to be perfect. Thus far, you have been,” Tissaia admits. Yennefer would feel self-satisfied if she weren’t waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Although no one is, Piglet. So why have you been?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia’s eyes narrow in scrutiny. Yennefer feels her heartbeat begin to go faster. “Probably dumb luck.” She tries to minimize the fact that she’s already been here, done this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer walks away before Tissaia can glean any more from her eyes, any more from her head. Before she can discover what lies in her heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Until the knock comes, Yennefer takes to waiting. Staring. Wondering if she will fail to catch lightning again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hasn’t tried again after that first initial time. Idly, her hand curls against her chest. The haunting feel of the white-hot heat slamming into her comes back once more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aside from the pain of being thrown back, Yennefer wants to avoid the whole scenario. While most of the other girls failed, this is the first trial Yennefer wants to run away from and not attempt again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But if she bolts, she’s playing into her biggest fear: of not being good enough. Only now, good enough is in direct relation to Tissaia de Vries. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer knows that she will ascend again. That whatever happens will have her going to a kingdom anyway. But to get to that point, she’s got to get through this one. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Three hard smacks sound on her door and she’s following the group to the caves. Above, the clouds swirl, and Yennefer knows Tissaia is the one brewing them. She glances over at the woman who has started whipping out names.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything goes like it did before and soon it’s up to her. “Piglet, your turn.” Tissaia’s voice has developed an even harder edge at watching them all fail. Instead of fear, Yennefer looks at the woman with determination. “Faster, come on.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One foot in front of the other. Sabrina is about to catch the bolts in a bottle and make the entire room of injured girls feel that much smaller. Frigilla will be the final straw and everyone else will walk out with their heads hung. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tell-tale crackle of it sounds above and with a quick look over to Tissaia, Yennefer arrives at a choice. She’s manipulated fire to kill an entire army. What’s a little bit of static charge?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the last second, just before the bolt shoots down to strike, Yennefer tosses the bottle at Tissaia’s feet. It shatters, spraying glass all over the woman’s gown. She yells and jumps back at the movement, a split second later looking back to Yennefer with rage in her eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer holds that rage against her and extends a hand in the air. “Piglet, no!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The scream echoes in the chamber as the bolt radiates down and Yennefer grips it hotly in her hands, holding it with all of her might to tame the snapping hiss of it in her fingers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s painful, rightfully so. This isn’t her magic, her own skills more adept at conjuring. She knows that this is Tissaia’s though, that the woman has learned the gift and art of manipulating it from her own hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a lurching walk, she approaches Tissaia who now holds nothing but shock and wonder in her eyes. She looks down at the jumping bolt in awe. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bending her fingers with the greatest of effort, Yennefer contorts the energy and then snuffs its light out in her palm, creating a fist. Ash falls downward or maybe flakes of her own flesh. Yennefer isn’t sure. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will succeed because I know how it feels to fail. I live with it every day, from the way I look to the way I am treated. I will succeed because I know there is a better life beyond this one,” Yennefer tells Tissaia, it leaving her like an omen of sorts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not that she intended it that way at all. But Tissaia retracts as if it’s such and Yennefer can’t look at her anymore. She shuffles off to the side, letting the darkness envelop her as she watches the rest of the trials. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they all start to filter out, Tissaia tries to catch her again. “What you did there was dangerous,” she hisses. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It felt pretty powerful to me.” Yennefer makes the mistake of using words she’s already spoken. Are they about to go down the same path?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You could have been seriously injured—or worse! Manipulating lightning like that…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can do it,” Yennefer cuts her off. Tissaia still hasn’t removed her hand from Yennefer’s arm. It’s odd to get used to this new development, where Tissaia is likely to reach out in touch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What I did. You can do it,” Yennefer says matter of factly. “Or I am wrong?” Yennefer knows she isn’t. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia ignores the inquiries. “If you hold so little regard for your own life, how can I send you to advise a king? And your precious life, somehow, doesn’t come into the equation one time and you do something beyond the scope of reason? You cannot submit to chaos. You must control it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Virfuril couldn’t care less about Yennefer’s control. He will want an adequate dance partner, someone to make him look good while he tries to ram heirs into the Queen. Yennefer will mix potions until her eyes cross and every single babe born from the woman’s loins will be a girl. And then Yennefer will subject the Queen to death herself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unless…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I understand.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you?” Tissaia grips Yennefer’s hands tightly, but there are no gashes to examine now. “Can you let go of that fear of failing and disregard for yourself? Can you value your own life enough for others to do so too?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Absentmindedly, Yennefer squeezes. Miraculously, Tissaia doesn’t let go. “If you teach me.” The words are soft and entreating. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Please, let me get something right.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve well and lost my mind,” she hears Tissaia grumble moodily. She nods. “I’ll see to it that you learn.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>——-//——-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While it doesn’t exactly go easy after that, Tissaia has become more friendly? As if that’s a thing. Yennefer knows this when she walks into the classroom one day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good morning, Yennefer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia’s tone speaks it like she’s been saying her name forever, like it’s no big deal that she’s graduated from ‘Piglet’ to her name again. Yennefer doesn’t even try to hide the smile that breaks across her face. She thinks she sees Tissaia smirk too. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This carries them along until it’s close to time for the assignment to the kingdoms. Between the points, she’s invited to do private studies with Tissaia, all magic based and with very little speaking but Yennefer finds the moments precious. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She takes the time to appreciate the things she sped through the first time, to be reminded of the grandeur that Tissaia is capable of. It’s through these points that Yennefer is reaffirmed of what lies within. That Tissaia is capable of so much more than she shows the world and how Yennefer would love nothing more than to bring that out of her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Time passes and before she knows it, Yennefer stands with Giltine once more, looking over dresses when her blood runs cold. She cannot go to Aedirn. Not again. But fuck, the alternative…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shattering her thoughts, Tissaia enters behind them. Yennefer looks over to the man and then back at Tissaia. “Might we have a moment, Rectoress?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Seeming to catch on, Tissaia motions silently with her head for him to make his exit. Slowly, she makes her way forward. “What is it, Yennefer?” When Yennefer doesn’t answer, her face falls. “Something troubles you. What is it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The assignments,” Yennefer admits. “Where am I to go?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia’s face loses its worry, (she should really keep it though, especially with what Yennefer is about to do) probably thinking she’s like every other girl as they approach leaving Aretuza. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are to be sent to Aedirn,” Tissaia’s mouth tugs at a corner. Yennefer can sense something resembling joy radiating from her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>She had been happy to tell me this</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Yennefer thinks. “You’ll be back in your lands. Back where you know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At one point in time, Yennefer had been proud to be from Aedirn. Fine with being from Vengerberg. But now, knowing what she does, going back feels like being shackled to a dying dream. Versus where she is about to request, where she is more likely to end up in literal ones. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I cannot go there, Rectoress,” Yennefer says, barely audible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Excuse me?” Tissaia is downright perplexed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m of elven blood. Not a lot but enough to count. Enough to matter to Cintra, whom I know my country has been trying to secure trade relations with. I cannot go there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A hand shoots to Tissaia’s head and she wipes small beads from her brow, caused by the flames around them. She spins and her mouth hangs agape.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I worked so hard to secure that assignment for you,” she laughs out in disbelief. “They thought you needed to be out of your comfort zone but I…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Send me to Nilfgaard,” Yennefer interrupts. She shrinks a little, unsure of what her own mouth is saying. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This is the way it was supposed to go.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia’s mouth creates a thin line. “What happened to that regard for your own life? You know how Nilfgaard handles their sorceresses, more prone to fondle them than…” She shuts her mouth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She looks at Yennefer with regret, empathy. They both know what will happen if Yennefer goes to Nilfgaard. Only Yennefer knows what happens if she doesn’t. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gently coming closer, Yennefer reaches out to touch Tissaia for the first time since this bizarre reliving of her life began. “Teach me this too.” She chances tightening her grip to let Tissaia know. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If I can kill a king, there will be no war.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer only needs to survive long enough to do that and then maybe everything will right itself. Sodden had also brought her and Tissaia closer though. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Before pushing us completely away. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know this makes not one lick of sense but Tissaia, you can trust me to do what’s right.” Continuing on with firsts, she uses Tissaia’s name instead of her title. She doesn’t know if a reprimand is coming, but she’s about to be without her for longer than she can bear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yennefer…” Tissaia’s voice breaks and she stares at the ground before finally locking their gazes. “Let’s begin then.” She takes a red gown from the waiting racks. “From now on, all of your lessons henceforth will be done in my chambers.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She tosses the dress at Yennefer. “We begin tomorrow.” As she leaves, Yennefer clutches the dress and stares at the color. She hates it as much as she did then. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia doesn’t jest when she speaks words, so she’s arriving promptly when the sun comes up. Yennefer’s door is being thrown open and Tissaia is striding in. “Are you ready?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not in a thousand lifetimes will Yennefer ever be. She says ‘yes’ all the same. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Assignments to the Kingdoms, Enchantment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A lot of pain before being assigned to Nilfgaard</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I don't think I'm overly explicit but there is some dark content here so: trigger warning for getting manhandled and talk of worse</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Days go by. Tissaia trains her to be a servant of Nilfgaard. What she doesn’t know is Yennefer only needs to get in before cutting them all to the ground. </p><p>There is little Yennefer has ever heard of King Fergus that was good. The more Tissaia talks, the more it becomes apparent she wants no part of his kingdom. </p><p>Or that it will be very easy to kill him when the time comes. Aggressive policies and ruthless to traitors, Yennefer is feeling wired and she hasn’t even shared the ceremonial dance with him yet. </p><p>“Why Nilfgaard?” Tissaia shakes her head. “I don’t understand it or you. You have the ability to do so much more than...you will if you go to that place.”</p><p>“So I’m too good for it but another sorceress is not?” Yennefer plants the thought. “But what if you sent another there, Fringilla perhaps? What havoc could she wreak if Fergus bent her agreeable nature to his will?”</p><p>“The effects could be devastating,” Tissaia admits. </p><p>“Yes. I don't do this to bite at your hand for working diligently to get me into Aedirn. I do this because I know I can withstand whatever Nilfgaard will try. I’m not used to life being anything but bleak.” Yennefer resigns herself to being subjected to unimaginable horrors. “But that begs the question: why are <em> you </em> helping me?  It’s not as if you’ve ever been prone to agree to one of my requests. </p><p>“Because I do not want you going in blind,” Tissaia answers immediately. She taps a finger on the arm of the chair she sits in, tilts her head, then shakes it. Confusion washes over her, maybe anguish. </p><p>Yennefer tries to scoot her own seat closer. She reaches to the hand Tissaia has rested on the arm of the chair, taking it into her own. “You can trust that I’ll do the right thing.” She’s said it before. It bears repeating.</p><p>She imagines dimeritium, flames. Triss lying burned and aching at the gate to the keep, Sabrina lying somewhere to the side of it, contorted and knocked out from a fall that should have killed her. No, if Yennefer does this, there will be no Sodden. </p><p>Time expands, leaving only their imperceptible breathing in the room, the rest of sound absent. Fingers curl around Yennefer’s hand. </p><p>“When you look at me that way, what does it mean?” Tissaia murmurs. “It’s the same one you had when I took you from Vengerberg. The same one you’ve had every instant you’ve been here. You look as if you’ve known me for years when it’s been but a blink in the time span that a mage lives.” </p><p><em> Because I have </em>. </p><p>“I’ve known others like you on the path my life has taken. Hard, unyielding.” Yennefer watches Tissaia’s cheeks grow heated with her appraisal. She works to amend. “But also more than meets the eye. I see you, Tissaia de Vries.”</p><p>“You’re not like the other girls,” Tissaia looks both puzzled and put out still.</p><p>“The other girls don’t understand how important you are or what you’re capable of. The most powerful among us.” Yennefer leans forward. “I used to want that. But as long as you walk this earth, it will always be you.”</p><p>By now, the archmistress's expression has softened by degrees. In fact, she’s gone from exasperated to looking halfway surprised. She looks down, murmurs. “That’s a very flattering thing of you to say even though you couldn’t possibly know.”</p><p>“I’d know more if you’d let me see,” Yennefer says. She looks at their hands pushed together, of how good they look wrapped up.</p><p>Even though she’s still got her crooked jaw, even though her spine is still gnarled, Yennefer knows she’s running out of time. Soon, she’ll be thousands of miles from Tissaia. She could not see her face ever again, in this past of a dream nor if she opens her eyes to the present. </p><p>And then Yennefer is on the verge again. Toeing the line of keeping her thoughts to herself or releasing them into the world, unchaining them from her heart. She feels the moment she had warned Tissaia about bubbling in her mouth. She hasn’t been able to speak it in one life. Maybe this can fix that.</p><p>“You make me feel things no other person on this earth has,” and it fits for both the one she’s lived and the retracing of this one too. “You have since Vengerberg, Tissaia.” </p><p>It’s close to the secret she’s held for every breath she’s taken. It makes Tissaia recoil as if slapped. The aches begin anew.</p><p>The rectoress’ face is stoic. “This is not the time to voice such things, if ever.” </p><p><em> No kidding </em> ambles through Yennefer’s head immediately. “I’m telling you so that you know. Do with it what you will. You can push me away as you’ve always done or...whatever. Soon, you’ll not have to see my face at all.” Yennefer blows out a breath. “This is why I look at you in such a way.”</p><p>Tissaia tilts her head and stands while beginning to pace, her long dress swishing back and forth, audible in her consternation over the fire in her hearth. </p><p>“You warned me about this. How did it happen, Yennefer?” She says it like she’s someone incapable of receiving emotion, of feeling it. </p><p>Rather than scare her completely off, Yennefer goes with the simple truth. “It’s been building a long time.”</p><p>“A long time,” Tissaia waves off but then stops, going still. “Theoretically speaking, if I run as I am wont to do right this very second…” she makes a stabbing motion at the ground. “It will be my downfall.” She blows out a large breath of air. “So I must do the opposite.”</p><p>Yennefer jerks up. “Wait, what?” </p><p>For most of her life, she’s been wandering, searching. Has found little during it all. But what might be presenting itself now is something Yennefer can’t even fathom. Tissaia looks convinced with whatever she has decided. </p><p>“Maybe you’ll see enough of me to be dissuaded from this notion.” Tissaia looks alarmingly convinced of her own words. Yennefer can’t grasp what to say next. She laughs with incredulity. </p><p>“So you think three weeks worth of lessons will erase a lifetime of you in me?” </p><p>“What?” Tissaia’s head snaps back to her from where she has taken to pacing stiffly. </p><p>Yennefer stills, recalculating where to go. She opens her mouth to speak but only lets out a sigh. She covers her eyes with her hands. “I’m only trying to do the right thing,” she mutters. To herself. To no one. Maybe even to Tissaia. </p><p>“Dinner in my chambers at 7. We will go over bartering and other scenarios as we sup,” Tissaia motions to the door, dismissing Yennefer to her own devices for a few hours. “Be prompt,” she commands at the door, her tone not one of argument. When Yennefer lingers at her door without meaning to, her eyes soften by degrees. They share a look that has Yennefer ready to run, but then Tissaia’s eyes look down and she pierces the silence with sound. “I know you think me hard and difficult to deal with in the best of situations.” Her blue eyes glance up again. Her next words are whispered. “But I have to be.”</p><p>Yennefer wants to ask so many questions, counter in so many ways. Instead, she sits inside of her broken body with her like scattered ash thoughts, wondering if she should work her aching jaw at all with a response.</p><p>“I know,” is all she says and then shuffles off down the hall. </p><p>—-//—-</p><p>“These subsequent lessons will have little to do with magic and everything to do with diplomatic matters,” Tissaia informs her when she walks into her chambers after knocking and being let in. </p><p>“Drivel,” Yennefer sighs. This has always been her least favorite part about being a mage. If Tissaia feels it pertinent though, at least it gets her closer to her than ever before. Which is honestly a bit shocking considering Tissaia’s earlier reservations.</p><p>“This drivel may save your life,” Tissaia snaps, pointing to the table where there is absolutely nothing at all. Not even a scrap of paper. Yennefer is going to have a hard time focusing on this subject matter if Tissaia doesn’t give her something other than her face to focus on. “First up: bartering scenarios. I’ll present you with a series of hypothetical situations and you will tell me, as an advisor to the king, how you will do so.”</p><p>Yennefer leans in, lets her voice belie her agitation. “This is a waste of time. You know it, I know it. Nilfgaard doesn’t care for politics. They’ll just as soon sever the head from a king who refuses their advances and pillage his kingdom.”</p><p>Tissaia looks troubled, as if she wants to ask how Yennefer knows this. They’ve not discussed what awaits her in Nilfgaard. Yennefer isn’t sure what awaits either, just knowing the rumors and witnessing how transformed Fringilla had become. </p><p>“Teach me to allow myself to be seduced, to be used without wanting to slit the throats of the men who will come for me,” Yennefer grits the words out. “Teach me how to ache and not lose myself to it.” She’s somehow slid from her chair, is kneeling in front of Tissaia and gripping her knees. Almost begging. “Show me how to survive there.”</p><p>Tissaia’s face is screwed up in anguish, not impassivity. She’s shaking her head, likely from not knowing what to say. How could she? Yennefer supposes she no more knows how to go about these sorts of ‘lessons’ than anything else. </p><p>“What you’re asking…”</p><p>“Will keep me alive, Rectoress!” She almost calls her by her first name, almost fists her fingers in the woman’s hair to make her understand. </p><p>She’s almost knocked over as Tissaia rises from her chair. Her blue eyes go to Yennefer on the ground and her face goes hard. “And what would you have me do, Yennefer? Beat you? Spit on you? Treat you as if you hold no regard in life?”</p><p>“Yes!” Yennefer shouts and stands. She needs Tissaia worked up, needs her to lose control. They’re both walking along the edge of what they know to be the truth. They both know what evil men do. “Treat me like the fucked up girl from the pig shit I am!”</p><p>Yennefer is spun so violently that she barely has time to process what is happening. Her jaw hits the stone of the wall and sends flaring heat all the way to her bone. She cannot move her head, can’t even turn to see Tissaia out of the corner of her eyes. </p><p>And for being a smaller in stature woman, Yennefer is surprised by the amount of leverage Tissaia manages. With a good jaw and spine, the Rectoress would be fucked if Yennefer chose to make a move, but with her deformities still in play, she’s as helpless as a mouse. </p><p>“Is this what you want, Yennefer?” she seethes behind her. “To be manipulated in such a way as to feel the press of a man rutting against you?” As if to punctuate her point, Yennefer feels Tissaia slam her hips into her which sends her careening into the wall again. A small cry escapes Yennefer’s lips. This only seems to strengthen Tissaia’s grip on her hair. Yennefer feels tears begin to pull, fights to keep Tissaia out of her mind but the archmistress pummels against her and she’s crumbling to the assault. </p><p>Visions swim, awful and terrible things. Tissaia fills her with death and destruction, loss and pain so deep, Yennefer finds herself wailing from the terribleness of it. “Tissaia, please…”</p><p>She has no idea what she’s asking for. Not anymore. Not when she asked for this. </p><p>“You think your cries, your wails, your tears will stop them? That they won’t just as soon snuff out your life at the first onset of weakness? This is me, Yennefer.” Tissaia shoves her hard again, rips at her frock, and exposes Yennefer’s thigh, the swell of her bottom. Her gown is itchy against Yennefer’s bare skin. “Is this enough to show you the darkness we are capable of? That you’ve come to care for me and I’m still able to do this to you?” She yanks Yennefer’s head back and this time, Yennefer does see the sneer on her face. “You cannot feel it if I’m a woman who can hear that and do this to you still!”</p><p>“But I do!” Yennefer cries. “No matter what you’ve done or what you’ve said, I lov…”</p><p>“Do not speak it!” Tissaia slams her against the wall again, this time with a stunning burst of chaos. Yennefer sags against it and then feels Tissaia whoosh away. She slides down the wall and feels hot tears leak out now without sound. </p><p>“You’re running,” Yennefer says after a few moments of silence. She works to steady the tremor of her words. </p><p>“What I’m doing has nothing to do with me and everything to do with you making a stupid choice to circumvent what I had already secured.” Tissaia sounds wrung out. </p><p>Yennefer can’t look at her, can’t see what she’s created by asking Tissaia to essentially destroy her. Instead, she mutters. “I think that’s enough for today. But same type of thing tomorrow?”</p><p>Tissaia stands stark still, not even the rustle of her thick dress making a noise. A portal opens underneath Yennefer and she falls through it and onto her bed in her small room. She brings a hand up to her jaw and rubs where the skin is gone across it, feels it burn all the way to her bones. </p><p>—-//—-</p><p>So goes the passage of three weeks. Yennefer arrives at Tissaia’s door after regular classes and then proceeds to ask the woman she’s rearranged her very heart for time and time again to basically bestow any horrors that she can on her. </p><p>There is no diplomacy. There is no checking in. Yennefer asks for no clemency and demands the worst of what Tissaia can give her. And while she would love to believe that what she goes through is Tissaia at her darkest, she can feel the woman holding back. </p><p>“They will beat you if they see fit,” Tissaia warns with a hand across Yennefer’s throat, squeezing as Yennefer’s airway closes up. Still, she never strikes Yennefer. </p><p>“They will steal your innocence from you,” she foreshadows another time and Yennefer has to remember that Istredd had taken that in her last life. She almost asks Tissaia to do it, to dig so deep she will never be the same. “But you must do it on your own terms” Yennefer is told and Tissaia never even tries to touch her there. </p><p>Once, she even bids for Tissaia to fetch dimeritium shackles, a move that has actual tears forming in Tissaia’s eyes. “I cannot.”</p><p>“You can and you will,” Yennefer finds herself commanding a woman who usually is not. “So much worse is coming. We both know it.” </p><p>So she’s shackled to the foot of Tissaia’s bed and all but forgotten for days. It’s torture sure, but the kindest form she’s likely to receive. </p><p>Somewhere in the haze of delirium, she lifts her head to find Tissaia sobbing over her. “What have you done to me?” she whispers, her voice all water. “I do not relish in this at all.”</p><p>“I’m teaching you to let go of me,” Yennefer finds herself saying. Maybe it’s also a lesson she’s teaching herself. </p><p>It all leads to the day of ascension, the day of the enchantments. Yennefer eyes Giltine with remembered pain. While he hadn’t been tender, he also hadn’t been cold about it either. He’d simply done what he was asked to do. </p><p>As the girls begin to filter out of their last meeting before the proceedings begin, each of them going to meet their new creator, Yennefer is surprised to be stopped by Tissaia on her way over to the man who did her last one. </p><p>“I’ll be doing your enchantment,” Tissaia mutters hastily. </p><p>Yennefer blinks, shocked. “What?” </p><p>“We will go to the bottom floor to begin,” Tissaia speaks quickly and then walks off without another word. </p><p>Yennefer lets Tissaia lead her to the room where the enchantments occur. Part of her feels the loss of the moment where they spoke about wants, where Tissaia had brushed her hair and told her she could be stunning. That was a good moment. Here, it never happens. </p><p>But now she’s being rushed into the area and Tissaia is a flurry. “I usually sit these out. I hadn’t planned on yours but…”</p><p>Yennefer watches her light the braziers with a quick string of Elder and begin preparing a table, rearranging everything just so. She eyes the chair with the shackles at the wrists and feet. She remembers the pain, how excruciating it had been. How she’d barely made it through. </p><p>Tissaia is here though. She can do it this time. She can be strong, especially after what she’s had Tissaia put her through the last three weeks. She stills Tissaia’s hand. All the preparations, all of it, have been leading to this moment. “No herbs. All I need is you.” </p><p>“No one goes through an enchantment without herbs,” Tissaia frowns. </p><p>“No one catches lightning either,” Yennefer says ruefully. She smiles. “We’ve got this though, right?”</p><p>Tissaia’s lips are set in a grim line. “I don’t like this. Not at all.” </p><p>Yennefer nods, surmises that Tissaia has liked little of what they’ve done together behind the door of her room. “I know.” She steps away and begins to remove her dress. Tissaia’s eyes never stray from her, not once. Even when Yennefer is completely bare, Tissaia does not turn. </p><p>She walks to the chair and sits, leaning back and feeling the cold metal against her back, wrists, legs. Anxiety flares at having to go through this again, but she reminds herself that she’s been torturing herself for weeks. <em> Tissaia didn’t do your enchantment either though. </em></p><p>Her nipples peak in the air, despite the warmth. It feels too embarrassing to admit that it’s Tissaia’s pale eyes on her, her delicate fingers fastening the leather cuffs against her wrists and ankles. A violent flash of other shackles, her knees worn raw from raking them across Tissaia’s floor, hits Yennefer’s mind. When Tissaia is through, she makes to walk off but then stops. </p><p>“Yennefer, this will be painful. The worst of your life thus far, maybe ever.” </p><p><em> No, you will always be </em>, Yennefer’s brain and heart pulse sadly. </p><p>The worst of the aches Yennefer has ever had to undergo. She can be broken and remade. She can be beaten and chained. She can have her mind invaded. She’d go through it all over having to feel the endless and gaping sensation of having Tissaia reject her affections. </p><p>The chasm of losing someone is deep, but losing Tissaia had almost ended Yennefer right then and there. Walking out of that tent at Sodden had been a haze. Yennefer felt herself bleeding from the way Tissaia’s hand had covered Yennefer’s lips as she had leaned down to take them against her own, how she had said the sentence that echoes in Yennefer’s mind all the time. She’d stumbled out of the tent to protests, her legs wobbling to keep her upright. The night had swallowed her and she had let it.</p><p><em> I’m not ready to let you go just yet </em>, Yennefer finds herself thinking even though she has told Tissaia that is what they have been doing-saying goodbye. She wishes she wasn’t bound so she could trace a hand along Tissaia’s cheek, finally rub away that line with her thumb between her eyes. </p><p>Yennefer isn’t sure what she imagined when Tissaia said she was going to do her enchantment instead. Certainly not that she would forget herself and let everything go.</p><p>Yennefer motions with her bound hand and Tissaia leans in, connecting their foreheads after Yennefer’s insistence. They don’t have long before Tissaia is due at the hall and Yennefer knows that she must get ready to arrive on time. <em> I bet she’s never been late a day in her life.  </em></p><p>“Have you been dissuaded finally?” Tissaia wants to know. Because of what Yennefer has had her do, the darkest part of her revealed when before she’d only scratched the surface of the cruelty she was capable of.</p><p>Yennefer tries not to relish in the small puffs of air coming from Tissaia’s mouth as she asks her question. She tries not to close her eyes and go down the path of imagination. </p><p>“You probably don’t want to know my answer,” Yennefer tries to wash away her own anxiety of having to experience this again, so she smiles. To circumvent the nerves from the pain she will feel. “That is unless you already know.”</p><p>This causes Tissaia to back away, Yennefer expecting another retreat that never comes. Tissaia stares down at her, blue eyes holding onto purple. Yennefer sees them flash with something quickly and then Tissaia is slowly leaning down, pressing against Yennefer’s lips.</p><p>As for Yennefer? She forgets to breathe. Even though their mouths are only touching for a few seconds, it’s enough to give Yennefer an entire lifetime of visions of the way things could be. It occurs to her she has no idea why Tissaia has done it at all.</p><p>“What was that for?” Yennefer sighs, some place between exceptionally happy and wary. </p><p>“A goodbye,” Tissaia says remorsefully. “Something to tide your heart over in its longing.”</p><p>The infiniteness of said longing is more than Tissaia will ever be able to grasp. Yennefer wants to say that she’s lived decades with it, that this spark is appreciated but bittersweet.</p><p>But the thing about tides is that they go...and come back. Dare she let the faulty hope of that unfurl? </p><p>“I do not know the future, Yennefer, or how it might change our hearts. But I will not run as you said I would,” Tissaia brushes her knuckles across her cheek. “So until we meet aga…”</p><p>Yennefer never gives her a chance to finish as she lunges, wanting to make sure her lips have gotten the taste of Tissaia correct. After all, she will have to reconstruct this on end inside of memories. </p><p>She yanks away before she will never let go. “Start the enchantment.”</p><p>Tissaia flies away then, her movements becoming hurried. There’s an even shorter amount of time available before she’s due elsewhere, her presence needed to begin the assignments. Tissaia works quickly, efficiently. The small satchel of tools is laid out, as sinister and gleaming as Yennefer remembers. </p><p>Maybe Giltine had cared, maybe he didn’t. He’d never spoken a word during the entire thing though, his eyes had gone dark when he began. Tissaia’s are very similar but for some reason, they don’t unsettle her.</p><p>When she moves the tray closer, she looks into Yennefer’s eyes. She’s grasping for resolve she’s finding it hard to have. Her face tells the tale. </p><p>“Many years ago when I was younger and harder…” she trails off on a withering look from Yennefer. “I was not new to being Rectoress, but my first few groups of girls went through unspeakable things in their courts. Times were different. So was I. </p><p>“I saw many bear king’s children against their will. I saw many’s very breath stolen from their lungs because they dared to carry a noble’s blood. I saw some die from potions and solutions that brought about their own end because they knew not exactly how to terminate life.” Her fingers land on Yennefer’s belly. “It was then that I decided that women can either be mothers or sorceresses—never both.”</p><p>Will Yennefer allow this to happen a second time? Is being a mage worth it? Is loving Tissaia grander than any child she could hold in her arms? </p><p>What’s already happened has happened. If she’s this far inside the past, she can only be meant to be a sorceress again. “I will lose my womb.”</p><p>“It is a sacrifice, I know, but my girls have been making it for years. It’s the only way I know to protect us, protect you, from what could be coming,” and Tissaia’s face is sadder than Yennefer has ever seen it. <em> She does care.  </em></p><p>Yennefer can only nod her assent and watches Tissaia move to her feet, kneeling. With a final look, she furrows her brows in anguish and begins. </p><p>The pain is worse than Yennefer recalls but what gets her through it is the fact that she’s already done this once and the deftness with which Tissaia works. While excruciating, it ends eventually and she can suck air back into her lungs. Tears run down her cheeks as she hears the wet sizzle of blood and organs in the fire. </p><p>Next, the same black pitch gets painted along her crooked jaw, her gnarled spine. Her entire left side must rearrange itself and this is seared into her mind too. How she’d cried guttural sounds. </p><p>“When I begin the Elder…” Tissaia’s voice catches and Yennefer has to wonder if she was this affected by the others she has done. </p><p>“Tissaia, I know.” </p><p>Tissaia is quieter when she does it but no less firm. The phrases rattle off at a fast pace, the ways she holds her hands and the manner in which she conducts herself shows her to be quite the artist.</p><p>When Yennefer’s body begins to spasm and she’s in the deep well of pain, she’s dimly aware of errant touches, just as firm as the voice, trying to ground her as she falls. </p><p>This time, there is no less screaming. Maybe twice as many cries. Because she’s been turned inside out once and is back again. Because Tissaia has kissed her and given Yennefer some scrap to take with her to Nilfgaard. </p><p>Yennefer lays spent on the stone tiles but not broken. Her bones have shattered and realigned, organs have been ripped out where scars will form again,  where they once were. No part of her is ready to stand on her own two feet and make to join Fergus at all.</p><p>“Then I shall hold you a little longer, my girl,” is the reply to all of the thinking her body cannot project into speech. </p><p>Tissaia could dive deep, drag up the recesses, and lay it all out on her palm for Yennefer to explain. Thankfully, she lets Yennefer curl even tighter into a ball, even closer to the solidness of her as she seeks out the hard edges. </p><p>What she gets is only endless comfort as Tissaia holds her, whispers about how brave she is. Yennefer takes the praise, as it’s likely to be the last she hears for years. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Meeting of the Kingdoms, Goodbye Aretuza</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The other girls filter in, one behind the other. Yennefer stands at the back, the last one to be presented to her future ruler. The confining and over-frilled red dress is as ridiculous as the first time she saw it, even less flattering on.</span>
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  <span>She doesn’t feel beautiful like before, not when she’d walked into the room and stolen another girl’s king off her arm. Not like when every head turned when she’d opened the heavy doors she’s currently walking through. </span>
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  <span>Tissaia brings up the rear too and if Yennefer loses herself a tad, she can imagine they’re walking in arm and arm, the other’s other half with no substitutions or changes. </span>
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  <span>The Rectoress has not been one to offer platitudes. Not in the life Yennefer lived before, not like one of the comforting touches she does now (those had appeared later on the way to Sodden, but she seemed hesitant in them, like she wanted to hold back even).</span>
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  <span>Along with those touches, so much of their relationship has been created without words and with their eyes. They’ve grown together, grown apart, grown in a number of different directions until they wound back around to where the other was. </span>
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  <span>Yennefer’s arms and hands sit in front of her, locked in the posture that Tissaia has taught them to adopt for this event. Quicker than she can track the movement, a delicate brush wisps over Yennefer’s hands, holds for only an instant, and then retreats back to Tissaia’s form. </span>
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  <span>As they walk through the door together, there’s not another person in the room. Tonight, there is only Tissaia in her flowing gown the color of blood and wine. </span>
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  <span>Yennefer is stuck between wanting to wake up before she has to endure even one second of Nilfgaard and seeing this through to see if she can save them all. To see if she and Tissaia can find one another again, just like they’ve always done no matter what point in life Yennefer has been living. </span>
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  <span>Fergus finds her quickly, tries to be dashing in a way he really isn’t. As they dance, his footwork is nothing short of impeccable, but Yennefer can’t help but cast her vision to where Tissaia stands by the other members of the Brotherhood. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The night wanes and she plays the role that she’s supposed to, taking notes from how Fringilla became as she hardened under the Nilfgaardian sun. Fergus seems pleased with the assignment, even going so far as to tell Tissaia so before they depart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If your grace wouldn’t mind sparing a moment for me to speak with the Rectoress one last time?” Yennefer lets her tone border on asking permission and giving a command. He nods and walks away to converse with others as important as him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tissaia…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yennefer, what is it?” Tissaia looks around the room, checking to see if anyone is watching their exchange. </span>
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  <span>“I don’t have long, so I will make this quick,” Yennefer says. “I don’t know what happens next.” But she does. She knows she’ll be taught forbidden magics like Fringilla was, that she will go years without seeing Tissaia. If she’s ever going to survive Nilfgaard, she needs the woman in front of her. “Let us not go great spans of time without speaking. I cannot bear it.”</span>
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  <span>“Why would that happen? Yennefer, you’ve got that look in your eye again and…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer effectively shuts her up by grabbing her and kissing her cheek with all the might in her body and all the love in her heart. It’s not on her lips, not where she wants her own mouth to be, but at least they’re touching. If this is what has to last her until they meet again, she will make it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You saved me, in more ways than you will ever understand. I’ll never forget that,” Yennefer tells her the things she spoke at Sodden because if she has her way, she’s about to change the course of her own history, of every other mage that died there, of Tissaia’s run-in with Fringilla and dimeritium. For once, Yennefer isn’t just saving herself with her decision—she’s saving them all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With that, she leaves Tissaia’s beautiful, perfect face. Never in her life would she ever have imagined walking away from the woman would cause anything other than joy. Instead, grief consumes her and she feels like she’s lost Tissaia all over again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She steels her heart. What she’s got to do will take time. On King Fergus’s arm, they depart and the years begin. Nilfgaard awaits. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>——-//———</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They teach her magics and art that would make even the night seem lighter. She can’t help but think of Fringilla in these moments of chaotic swirl, not exactly feeling forgiveness toward her but something closer to pity. She can close her eyes and see that scared and innocent face, brought into magic by accidentally freezing a cat. She’d been so remorseful of it then, so naive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer can’t even blame Nilfgaard for depositing the seed of darkness in Fringilla either. That happened because she strode in like there was nothing else in the world but her own wants and desires, so bent on showing an entire room full of people she was her own destiny, fuck the rest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something strange happens while she waits for her opening, as the years are flicked away: someone else slides in. Fergus dies and Yennefer supposes it’s all for the better but then somewhere in the mix, his rightful heir weasels his way out of Nilfgaard in the chaos of a brutal ruler (Yennefer knows what happens next—Emhyr returns someday and helps burn the Continent to the ground)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She so desperately wants to wake up the more she conducts the darker arts but then…the fluttering push of what she’s buried deep. (Tissaia, always, forever)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nilfgaard tests her though. She learns psychological warfare, essentially told to pry apart an enemy soldier’s brain from the inside, just a young fellow from Ebbing that Nilfgaard has just managed to procure. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another time, she’s commanded to perform a necromantic ritual on a commanding officer’s still warm body, sifting through his memories until she finds the intelligence that they are searching for. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Usurper makes Fergus look like a vision of purity, makes her almost wish Emhyr would show his hedgehog face so she could slit his throat. There are so many times that Yennefer retreats to her room while living in the City of the Golden Towers and has to paw at her own chest, wondering if the darkness that’s a part of every day is spreading inside her soul. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the days are done, Yennefer’s thoughts turn to Tissaia and she wonders why this has to be the way of things again, why they must be separated. The more time she dailies, gets sucked into the spreading rot of the Usurper's reign, she is that much closer to failing.</span>
</p><p><span>So she plans tediously. Sends out a note for Tissaia, veiled through the wonder of magic in ink. Not exactly the phrase </span><em><span>I’m still going to cut the serpent’s heads off, starting with the heir or groundhogs or kings,</span></em> <em><span>it matters not to me.</span></em><span> There will be a reckoning and Yennefer will find Emhyr to cut him down where he stands, then come back and destroy Nilfgaard to ashes.</span></p><p>
  <span>There have been sightings far north, almost back to where </span>
  <em>
    <span>she</span>
  </em>
  <span> is, gods, so close yet so far away. Yennefer has heard the creature has made his way into Cintra and she is bound and determined to make sure Emhyr never meets Paveta.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As she portals out of Nilfgaard and into Cintra, she damns Calanthe for her pigheadedness. The woman has no clue what awaits her, the ruin that is coming, if Yennefer can’t run a blade across Emhyr’s neck quickly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s fairly easy to pick up on his scent because he thinks his inconspicuousness is superb. As if he doesn’t smell like a rodent behind that ridiculous helmet from full armor he wears in public places. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer has just managed to keep up with him for several suns, gets there too late as she chances upon his initial meeting with Pavetta, even though she would have preferred she got to him before it occurred. Luckily, there’s no child brewing in her belly yet, so Yennefer follows him with hawklike precision, waiting to swoop in when his guard is down. When he has been blinded by love. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s when she’s on his tail that she’s pressed into an herbalism shop, so caught up in following him that she fails to notice the world around her. She startles when she looks past the hood, into its dark interior, and sees the azure eyes of Tissaia staring back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“One king dies during your tenure, his heir is cursed and disappears to Cintra. Please, tell me how you insisting on this post is working out for you,” Tissaia says sweetly so as not to alert the scant bodies around them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the surface, it looks like old friends bumping into one another, exchanging pleasantries. All Yennefer can think about is kissing Tissaia into nothingness though. That would wipe the pinched expression Tissaia wears after she surveys Yennefer. There is half a decade stacked against them since Yennefer kissed her cheek. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Emhyr is near here, whom I was following before you shoved me in here. I am to do something about it,” Yennefer says in a grated whisper. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yet there is another man wreaking havoc on the throne that you ignore. He’s destroyed the south. Why haven’t you advised him against it?” Tissaia pulls her to a particularly fragrant clumping of honeysuckle and leans down to take in the aroma. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because the one missing will do worse, not content with just the south,” Yennefer foreshadows. How much should she let Tissaia in on the future that is coming? “I’ve followed him here because a rendezvous with the Queen’s daughter is quickly becoming a thing. One that will bear them a child that turns the world on its end.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia’s eyes flash wild, and she wraps an arm around Yennefer’s, pulling them closer together. “Do not speak things so loudly. Where did you come into this information.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer fidgets. “Call it a prophecy.” Tissaia backs away, displeasure etched into her face. “It’s not just lofty musings.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know we’re mages, but I’ve never found much stock in prophetic musings or visions,” Tissaia murmurs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What of destiny then? Is there only a singular path to tread in life at any given moment or are there multiple ones to choose? And what if we choose wrong? Does the other path grow over, become hidden for all eternity?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia rolls her eyes. “You sound like a druid or worse.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer begins to lose patience, it snapping like twigs inside of her blood. She grabs the woman roughly, a snarl twisting her lips. “I’ve ripped apart someone’s mind from the inside out, Tissaia. I’ve gone into the withering brain of a man whose heart stopped beating minutes before I tore through his mind.” She sneers, pushing back the heavy black fabric of her cape, her vest. “They hold no regard for life now. It will only get worse.” Her nostrils flare. “I will get worse and then I don’t know if anything will be able to be pulled out of me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To prove a point, she pulls Tissaia to a vine-covered alcove and opens her shirt wider. Casting a spell, she closes her hand and lets it hover over the swell of her chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This isn’t something she learned at Aretuza. Nothing that Tissaia would have ever taught her. Yennefer wonders if she even knows how (probably. In Yennefer’s head, Tissaia knows everything). Steepling her fingers over her heart, (because isn’t that where all darkness lies at its roots?) she speaks an ancient language, something older than Elder, and begins to slowly pull her fingers away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They shake, the force of what they’re holding titanic. As she moves, a glowing black and sticky residue is pulled from under the skin. But further past that too. It rids Yennefer of breath and she almost faints. There is a reason this is never done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she can take no more, Yennefer sags against the wall and works to take big gulping lung fulls of air. She can feel the inky black on her hands still.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What did you just do?” Yennefer is asked and she holds up her fingers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is what adheres to someone who learns the dark arts. This is what grows every time one is made to cast a spell. I’m guessing if it happens for long enough, it can make a person lose themselves.” She feels drained, weak. Sensing this, she feels Tissaia’s arms go around her to bolster her upright. “Fringilla stood no chance.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What of Fringilla? She’s been in Aedirn for the last five years. At first, the pairing seemed rocky, but I’ve received no complaints about her. True, Queen Kalis has sired no heir…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And she never will unless Aedirn forgoes the deeply rooted patriarchy of the land and allows a female to rule, like Cintra,” Yennefer begins to walk away but stumbles. “Although the second Calanthe marries, her power goes to her new king.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You speak in riddles, like things have already happened,” Tissaia shakes her head, confused. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Because they already have. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She feels Tissaia grab her hand and bring it to eye level with her. She goes to dip the pad of her finger in what’s there and Yennefer pulls away quickly. “Do not!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A part of my life source,” Yennefer replies. “I could only manage to pull out the darkness of a few days but if I’d kept going, I would have bled myself of time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yennefer...” Tissaia’s eyes are harrowed, her perfect eyebrows cutting across her brow ridge.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The darkness binds with life, therefore it becomes it. How much do you know of forbidden magic?” It’s the first time she’s ever had to push Tissaia on what she is knowledgeable and capable of. Judging by Tissaia’s response, she knows enough. “There’s a reason the Brotherhood outlawed this. Because it feeds on a person’s soul until there’s nothing left but it. Until it crams out a person completely.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A hand presses into her cheek and Tissaia is close, whispering words. (How have they not managed to attract attention? Yennefer will never know)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What they’ve done to you, what you’ve had to do. This is not what I wanted for any of my girls,” Tissaia sounds distraught, even for her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The dark part of Yennefer rears, a horse on powerful legs, even darker because of the life she’s been living all over again, this beautiful and horrible dream she’s been inside. Their conversation has not been about the time that’s passed between them so far. Yennefer makes it such.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have you had time to come to terms with your fear?” Yennefer purple eyes threaten a storm. “Or are you still running?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Has five years not done anything to staunch those unwise words of yours?” Tissaia wonders and immediately Yennefer huffs out a laugh. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Every day this grew, every day it became more developed in me?” She holds her fingers up to remind. “You’re the only thing that got me through. That continues to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While Yennefer is not Fringilla, she’s not quite herself either anymore. For this reason, she doesn’t give Tissaia a chance to walk away and pushes her into the honeysuckle vine, kissing her with, hopefully, the uncorrupted part of her heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One, two, three brushes of her lips, like waltzing, as Tissaia doesn’t even move. Well then. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oi, what’s goin’ on back there?” Yennefer removes herself from Tissaia at that and lets a pained smile spread.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s not go another five years…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...Yennefer, please,” Tissaia grabs the dark fur lining around her neck, but Yennefer lunges again and Tissaia back pedals at the prospect of another kiss.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer does a tight nod before ducking out of the side door to the shop. She thinks she hears </span>
  <em>
    <span>the child must be born</span>
  </em>
  <span> on a hiss but she’s already rushing down the dirt path far away before the words strike. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sags against a brick wall, winded. Holding out for another two years seems impossible. Brushing her tingling lips, some essence of Tissaia left behind, some part of her resolve wobbles. She’d wait for her if she knew she could sway the passage of time. If the way Tissaia had remained still is any indicator, Yennefer is likely failing all over again. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Nilfgaard Living and the Plot to Unravel It All</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The chapter in which Yennefer continues to be an idiot but gets called out for it this time.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>He calls himself Duny for a while and Yennefer can’t help but be amused. He does what all men do, make women fall in love with them until they’ve inflated their womb with child. Pavetta even seems to dismiss the hedgehog look while he’s cursed. It makes Yennefer roll her eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d been at that banquet where everything had hit the fan. Watched Calanthe, arrogant and boisterous. as the men surrounded them, looking for Pavetta’s hand. They did not know what Yennefer did though. That life was already growing within. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Geralt arrived, she had slunk even further away from the main crowd. No one would miss a scullery maid anyway. She’d heard this was how it worked out but being there was a bit rattling as Pavetta had thrown up white all over the ground.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Since then, she’s done as has Tissaia asked. She’s let the child grow in Pavetta’s belly (</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ciri</span>
  </em>
  <span>-a name that follows her everywhere) She’s let it shift her focus from Emhyr momentarily to the dashing young thing he names as his chief intelligence officer: Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t know why she sends out another letter to Tissaia but she does. Asks her to meet where Yennefer knows Cahir and his battalion are taking over an inn for the night, the rowdy rabble-rousers celebrating their new commander’s posting. Yennefer decides to give him a little token of her esteem as well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer sits on a long bench by herself and orders wine, wears her best dress, and makes eyes at Cahir all night. He notices her, the flickering dark of his eyes finding her among ballads and toasts now and again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was never interested in him, not from the get-go. Even less so when she sees the slight form slip through the door and light up the entire room. Yennefer’s never quite seen Tissaia like this, past or present. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her hair is down which Yennefer wishes she could say is the most shocking thing. But no, not at all. The dress, if one could call it that, is unlike anything she’s ever seen. The bodice looks like shining brown leather which makes a crosshatch pattern across her chest and dear gods, her arms are gloriously bare except for the web-like leather that wraps around her shoulders. Beneath the gleaming leather, a crushed red velvet dress flows to her feet. Her rectoress necklace is absent. She sits across the room from Yennefer, smiling as she gets her own glass of deep red liquid from the innkeep. When she lifts it to her lips, her blue eyes bore into Yennefer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As for Yennefer, well, she has to remember she’s gripping glass and not metal, or else she’s sure the goblet would have caved to the pressure of her hands, shards flying everywhere. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She finds her breathing disturbed, bordering on erratic. It has been since Tissaia walked into the room. Now, Yennefer knows she will have no trouble at all being ready to lead Cahir up to the room she’s rented. Tissaia is making her burn.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With another look to Cahir, who’s lost himself in his companions again, Yennefer takes the break from his gazing to approach Tissaia. She walks purposely forward and sits down on the bench across from her, her best smile gracing her features. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You remind me of someone I know,” Yennefer plays oblivious, maybe seeing a flicker of merriment in Tissaia’s eyes. “But I don’t think she would </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever</span>
  </em>
  <span> be so bold as to wear something this stunning. I’ve never seen her let her hair down.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well on her way to that wonderful place between sober and drunk, Yennefer looks back at Cahir, still preoccupied, and reaches out to run a finger along Tissaia’s hand and wrist that grip her glass. She even moves a little higher, in awe of the smooth skin as she glides over the woman’s forearm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia retracts to take a drink, gracefully so, and then deposits it with great care back onto the table. Slowly, she leans forward and Yennefer cannot remember how to breathe. “I do believe that people oftentimes have a way of surprising us.” She cants her head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I assure you, good madam, that I am certainly full of those.” Yennefer feels sure of herself, bolstered by drink, and she lets the truth fall from her lips. “Such a shame that I plan to take that one to bed there instead of you. It would prove more pleasurable, I’m sure.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer rises but then is grabbed and tugged so roughly by the wrist that she’s having deja-vu all over again. Haven’t they already done this? Only no, maybe not, because last time, Tissaia didn’t have her fingers wrapped around Yennefer’s throat squeezing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Game over, huh?” Yennefer chokes out. “And here I thought our little roleplay was working splendidly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you intend to do, Yennefer?” Tissaia hisses again. As if she could ever be heard over the room full of Nilfgaardian soldiers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Same as you’re doing now,” Yennefer tries to break free but Tissaia doesn’t let go of her windpipe. “Just intending to add a blade to this little get-together.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t mean…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, not you. Never in a hundred years, you.” Yennefer jerks her head. “That one in there.” Tissaia’s fingers lose a fraction of pressure. “So in case something happens, in case the world tips on its end again, I want you to kiss me so that I can go to my grave with you on my lips.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve been speaking nonsense since the day I picked you up in Vengerberg. Are you finally ready to tell me the truth or are we going to keep playing the game of you holding everything so closed off, I may never be let in?” Tissaia’s voice is cutting, tired. She leans closer. “Don’t think of lying to me again either. I’ve let you get away with it for the last ten years.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tissaia..”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In fact, I’m almost positive the only time you’ve been forthright with me was during the thought transference exercise at Aretuza. Otherwise, it’s half-truths and gilded lies. You’re the only mind I’ve never been able to penetrate fully. Even when you were a student, you’d already locked it off so tightly, I could not break through.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With that, Tissaia releases Yennefer’s neck. The darkness that eats at her constantly whispers. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You hope she left marks</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Because since they last saw one another, Yennefer has had to torture people too. Some part of her has developed an affinity for it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re not half-truths, but you take them as such,” Yennefer rubs the rawness of her throat. “There is no prophecy though. The things I’ve told you, what I’ve said—it’s all things I’ve lived. Fringilla and Nilfgaard. You and your fears. Me falling in love with you and you not trusting me enough to love me back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia’s face is stone, but Yennefer can tell the woman is troubled. They know each other too well by this point. Yennefer can read it all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Emhyr has elevated Cahir to this position. He will ransack the south and come for the north. Cintra will fall and with it, everything that we hold dear for a while. You and I have years of space between us but you came to me in Rinde once and began something I’ve never been able to escape. It’s what pulled me to Aretuza again after years. It’s what made me follow you to Sodden and fight.” Yennefer sighs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s what made me profess my love. And for you to reject it. Right now, I’m lying on a table in Skellige under some bog witches spell, trying to fix the mistakes I’ve made. But I still haven’t stopped anything by going to Nilfgaard. And I still don’t have you.” The last thing is whispered. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Booted feet approach and Yennefer shoves Tissaia back against the other wall, backing away until she’s making her way out to the inn’s main room. Rounding the corner, she meets Cahir, who sways. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s you,” his eyes go from hazy to focused when he recognizes who he has bumped into. “I know you. You’re our mage.” He glances over at Tissaia but seems to find her of no regard to him, so he looks back to Yennefer. “Did the King send you to watch over my group?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Something like that,” Yennefer agrees. “Call me a congratulation present.” She runs her fingers along his shirt so there is no doubt. When his eyes register, when they turn dark in agreement, she drags him away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>~</span>
  <em>
    <span>Stop this instant, Yennefer! </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She can feel Tissaia trying to follow but they’re enveloped by his brood of boys and jostled around so, they lose her in the din. Cahir hoots out a yell and then lets Yennefer continue up the stairs with him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her mind feels like it’s going to split into, Tissaia is hammering so hard against it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>~</span>
  <em>
    <span>You cannot throw me out completely. I will find what room you’re in and put a stop to this madness</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>~</span>
  <em>
    <span>This madness you speak of is going to save thousands of lives, thirteen mages. Your own from getting a face full of dimeritium.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>~</span>
  <em>
    <span>You’ve yet to explain how you know all this. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>~</span>
  <em>
    <span>Would it make sense if I did? I doubt. Do you know of any spell that lets you go back to the past and relive one’s life again?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Silence—blissful, quiet stillness—creates a space between Tissaia’s pushes. Yennefer uses those moments to crash her lips into Cahir’s, to shove him to the bed, to assure the knife is underneath the feather mattress she tops him on. With a flourish, her clothes are gone. His have disappeared in a ragged shuffle already. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer has no intention of mounting him but she needs him to think that in order to get close so that she can…</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>~I’ll break every door down if I have to! </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>As if to further reiterate the point, Yennefer hears a door suffer from a concussive blast a few rooms down from where she and Cahir are. Yennefer looks down to see him startle at the noise, but she roughly jerks his attention back to her very bare body on top of him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Over here, dear,” she smiles with all of her teeth bared and her voice dripping with intent. Of what, he doesn’t have to discern between the two, does he? For her own reinforcement, she throws up a shield with a quickly uttered spell in Elder and turns back to him. “Ah, now where were we?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The seconds should not be split. Yennefer should have more time to process that Tissaia absolutely destroys her shield like it wasn’t even in place at all. Reeling, she lunges with her lips and attaches them to Cahir while her left hand travels under the mattress. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>About the time her hand grabs the hilt, Tissaia splinters the door and it is thrown open, her following the clang of it. Cahir is no idiot, Yennefer will give him that, but he’s figured out a moment too late what fate awaits him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer grabs him by his long hair and wrenches him up to put his body between her and Tissaia who holds up a hand and her blue eyes crackle. Cahir tries to maneuver out of Yennefer’s gasp but she mutters a spell that essentially incapacitates him and leaves him for the taking. Tugging his hair back, she withdraws the bone-handled knife and watches the shock cross Tissaia’s face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s because it’s her dagger. The one from her drawer in Aretuza. If Yennefer is about circumventing fates, she’s taking the chance on the upcoming one too. One that she’s never spoken a word of to anyone in her entire life. Words told to her by a crazed loon but so disturbing, she has lived with them every day. Because that loon told her that she would bury the person she loved most. That the death would manifest from a place almost like home, would arrive with bone and steel, and rip away what Yennefer had fallen for entirely too late to save. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After the thought transference session, Yennefer had become a fixture in Tissaia’s study. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>One afternoon, they’d been discussing certain regions of the Continent that they enjoyed at certain parts of the year, places they still would like to go. Yennefer had seen little and was enraptured with Tissaia’s broad travels. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I want to be like that one day. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>They had been interrupted by a courier, a letter from Ban Ard requesting the rectoress for their monthly meeting. Yennefer had watched her reach into a drawer, saw the glint of metal and the smear of white. It all came back to her then and she had ceased to breathe. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yennefer, think about what it is that you’re doing,” Tissaia practically pleads. She takes a cautionary step forward and Yennefer takes that moment to dig Tissaia’s knife into his flesh. A droplet of crimson begins to ooze. “When did you take my knife?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“On one of our visits,” Yennefer admits. “While you were training me to live through the terrors of going to Nilfgaard.” With one hand, she holds the knife against Cahir’s neck, with the other she speaks the spell again to pull more darkness from her. It oozes out too, just like his blood. “This is one neither of us could have known.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wipes the residue on her bare thigh, jolting back to the fact that both she and Cahir are starkly bare. Tissaia looks at the black smear against Yennefer’s skin and takes another step forward. Then another. Her look is deadly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you aim to take his life, frame me for his murder?” Another step.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer feels her heart burst in confusion. Her face screws up with the same. “What? No! I’m saving us! I’m saving you!” She screams it. She doesn’t care. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think that you can be sent back into your past life, take the head off of a dragon, and wake up to where everything will be alright? Yennefer, life doesn’t work like that.” Finally, </span>
  <em>
    <span>finally</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Tissaia’s eyes go soft. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...I could stay here. Cahir will never become a great commander, never find Princess Cirilla, never have Fringilla to cater to his every whim—who will also never throw a fistful of powdered dimeritium in your face.” Yennefer tries to think of all the ways she could end whatever fates are coming. “And you will never take your own life in guilt because you asked me to do something that about broke us both.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer hasn’t lived a supposed coup at Thanedd. She’s surprised she’s even returned to Skellige after the loon had stopped her as she walked along the docks, fresh off a boat from the mainland. No portals that time, as she was trying to run from her life once again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So long ago. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders what life would have looked like if, after Rinde, she hadn’t taken that boat. If she hadn’t walked down that dock that day. If she hadn’t stuffed the loon’s words down so deep, she’d tried to forget them, only never being able to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Is that the truth to the love Yennefer feels for Tissaia? No, because it’s more than just wanting to protect her, deeper than wanting her safe. Both more difficult and more full up than wanting to be simply friends. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At some point, (maybe the very first point) Yennefer no longer felt the impossible anguish of wishing they could be different, that the tension could just simmer for a while. At some point, it morphed to caring where Tissaia was in a crowd or wondering what Tissaia was doing. To feeling jealous when she was giving her attention to someone else when Yennefer was in the room. Love spiked, taking completely over. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you love me as you say you do, you will not do this.  There has to be another way.” Tissaia is directly beside the bed now, just off to Yennefer’s side. Yennefer watches her extend a hand, imploringly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>because</span>
  </em>
  <span> I love you that I’m doing this.” Yennefer’s voice cracks. “And if it works, neither of us will have to experience the things that have torn us apart. If it doesn’t then, well, it can’t be any worse than what I’ve already been through.” A tear slides down her cheek, one. More. Her eyes are glassy. Tissaia is so beautiful. “I love you,” she whispers and drags the blade across Cahir’s throat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia looks on in horror as the blood spurts from the opened flesh, as it bubbles between Yennefer’s fingers—warm life spilling. He falls over onto the bed with a mild thud and then...nothing happens. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer looks down at the body, eyes gazing at nothing, then back to Tissaia who stands frozen. She startles at the woman’s face, the knife clattering to the ground. It’s because her hands are shaking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve succeeded then,” Yennefer says more to herself for reassurance than anything else. “Otherwise, I would be waking up, right?” She paws at her naked body, smears of crimson everywhere. She’s still inside this bizarre dream. “That’s what the bog witch said. That if I failed, I’d wake up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She finds herself getting frantic, over which possibility occurring, she does not know. She repeats the essence of her words. “I didn’t fail. Everything is okay. I’m still here and you must love me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tissaia’s face is twisted into something Yennefer doesn’t even want to touch but that she can’t deny. The silence gives her an answer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then why are you here?” Yennefer can’t help but break. Her shoulders sag and she almost falls onto the bed but then Tissaia’s hands are against her, holding her up. </span>
  <em>
    <span>She’s always trying to keep me upright. How can she find the strength to keep me taut?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Fingers dig into flesh, Yennefer can make out the blue of Tissaia’s eyes. “Yennefer…” She clutches Yennefer to her, desperate. “You’re forever a puzzle in me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The whispered words fracture as they try to reach Yennefer’s ears. She makes to back away but feels fuzzy, disconnected. The room narrows. Yennefer scrabbles at whatever part of Tissaia she can reach until it’s like she’s falling down a hole, nothing to grab onto. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not even aware she’d closed her eyes, she works to open them but they feel heavy. Something hard is pressing against her back. Managing to raise her lids with a flutter, she stares up into a face that isn’t as familiar. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You failed again, I see,” the bog witch looks sympathetic but amused too. Rage rises and surfaces but Yennefer finds her throat constricted. “Welcome to the life after.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tears prickle again and Yennefer feels despondent. She can’t even bring herself to move. Twice she’s had to live the same damn life and she’s mucked it up both times. She wants to curl into a ball and disappear. Another voice shatters the thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes. Whatever will you do now?” it asks and Yennefer’s heart skips a beat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Above her, those same blue eyes she just left come back to her again. She doesn’t look exactly happy but it doesn’t matter. Tissaia is here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re an idiot,” Tissaia says, radiating anger, and spins, leaving. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Everything After</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tissaia just makes it through the door to the shack before Yennefer lifts herself off the table, temporary paralysis gone. She trips and almost falls as she follows, but bursts through the door after the woman. Whose tiny stature, surprisingly, is moving very quickly.</p><p>She exits the lean-to with wobbly steps that even the dirt can’t tame the wild stomp of. Yennefer marvels at how quick Tissaia can move for someone of her stature and size. </p><p>“It’s always something,” Tissaia whirls around to face Yennefer, who is still a bit disoriented. She squints and reels a little when Tissaia does her own stomping back toward her and wipes roughly at Yennefer’s cheek, bringing her finger to her nose. </p><p>“Ergot? Really?” Tissaia scoffs loudly. “She smears this on your face and calls it magic.” She begins to wave a hand around. “Venturing to the past? Reliving a life? She drugged you, Yennefer.” She walks off again.</p><p>Yennefer struggles to keep up, still a bit woozy. “There’s a reason I did this.” Her boots feel leaden and her tongue thick. Tissaia turns and holds up a finger.</p><p>“Don’t you dare,” she warns. </p><p>This grates on Yennefer to the core. She finds herself coming to tower over Tissaia, her being bearing down on the woman. In the distance, thunder rumbles. “I’ve sheltered you from it, stuffed it down and away so as not to put you in a position of discomfort.” When Tissaia’s eyes become too much, Yennefer backs up and shakes her head. “Only once have I ever voiced it to you, in that tent in Sodden. And I’d go back and live a hundred lives if it meant I’d get to have you in just one of them.”</p><p>“Yennefer, please, stop,” Tissaia looks much like she did when she was asking Yennefer to throw her life on the line for a cause she didn’t believe in. “I don’t know how to handle this.”</p><p>Even though the words rip through her with a clatter, Yennefer can only nod knowingly. She understands the way someone can stare at the same thing in front of them forever until, suddenly, it magically changes one day. After all, that’s what’s happened with Tissaia. </p><p>“I never wanted to be your greatest fear. I never wanted to love you,” Yennefer shrugs. “But maybe that is my biggest failure, my punishment for the things I’ve done. I don’t get to have you in any juncture of my life.”</p><p>Tissaia watches Yennefer but remains stationary, only her eyes tracking Yennefer’s movements. Yennefer wonders what Tissaia was like before this, so many years ago. What kind of child she was, what kind of young woman she grew up to be. Was she always this removed, always this closed off from emotion? </p><p>Something flickers, like the lightning behind her,  across Tissaia’s face and she looks out to the quiet waters of the bay, the lands of Cintra too far for the eye to see but still there, still broken and waiting. Just like the two people standing face to face. </p><p>“There are times to speak of such things and then there are not.” Yennefer thinks another rebuff is coming, but then… “Your chaos was unstable, unpredictable. I felt it all the way to Thanedd. I still feel it now. Meet me in two days hence, and we will discuss these matters.”</p><p>So formal, so precise. Yennefer hasn’t missed the concession Tissaia is making, an agreement to have them discuss what has grown and been trampled on in the six-month absence. However, she also frowns at something else Tissaia has said. </p><p>“You’re here because you felt me?” Yennefer steps closer and Tissaia watches her carefully. “What did you feel?” The last part is barely perceptible. </p><p>“Your anger. Your despair. Your joy mixed in like a flower appearing on a barren field.” Her face is reflective, Yennefer thinks, of maybe holding too much in. “I always feel it. Everything. Maybe that’s why I’ve never had room for my own emotions. I have spent as long as I can remember awash in all of the girls.” </p><p>Her hand reaches out, a timid thing, but her eyes stay strong and focused. She doesn’t divert away from staring at Yennefer’s. The touch settles on her shoulder, then skates away with a quick look in the direction of the noise behind them.</p><p>The bog witch has come out of the door and looks at the scene in front of her, Yennefer and Tissaia standing much too close to dismiss as anything but a fraught history existing between them. Up until now, Yennefer has been vague about who exactly is the object of her affections. She’s sure this settles the wondering. </p><p>“We shall pick this up again, on Thanedd,” Tissaia’s voice dips. </p><p>“No,” Yennefer says quickly, her eyes flicking back to the bog witch. “I still have a place in Rinde.”</p><p>“Not there either,” Tissaia shakes her head just as fast, dismissing the idea. She sighs. “I suppose both places have too much meaning in our pasts.”</p><p>“What meaning does Rinde hold for you?” Aretuza is an easy hurt to figure out, but this one? Yennefer has to contemplate what Tissaia took away from that meeting.</p><p>“You talk of failures and mistakes.” Another head shake, a few tendrils falling away from the now less than tight coil at the nape of Tissaia’s neck. She looks off again. Her words almost disappear in the sound of the waves. “Rinde was mine.” She turns. “Both a mistake and a failure. I should have never gone there because all it did was make things volatile between us.” A beat. “We shall meet in Brugge then.” Without waiting for anything to come from Yennefer, Tissaia beats a hasty retreat. Yennefer watches her go, waits for a long time after she’s well out of sight. </p><p>“So do you believe her then?” The bog witch rattles the bones on her necklace with a finger. “That I drugged you and you saw visions from a hallucinogen?”</p><p>Yennefer doesn’t even trust her own heart. Eyes, ears, hands, whatever. They’ve already been liars too. When it comes to truth, Yennefer doesn’t know the meaning of the word. She frowns.</p><p>“What’s your name anyway?” The bog witch cocks her head to the side and Yennefer clarifies. “This whole time, I haven’t even known your name. What is it?”</p><p>The woman presses her lips together tightly, exhales a breath that makes her necklace jingle. “Cassandra.”</p><p>Yennefer mutters, “bloody hell.” The skies break open then. She lets the waters drench her completely before she trudges away.</p><p>
  <strong>//</strong>
</p><p>The only thing she knows about Brugge before actually being in Brugge is that she knows absolutely nothing about Brugge other than Vanielle hailed from the country. </p><p>Yennefer has tried not to piece together some sort of meaning from Tissaia choosing here, but it’s left scampering thoughts in her head. She knows the Rectoress and the sorceress Vanielle had forged a friendship as some of the only women in the Brotherhood. But had there been more? Is Tissaia still mourning her loss some six months hence? </p><p>The truths are not forthcoming in her own mind, but she hopes that Tissaia can right some of the wild ideas she has. She’ll do well not to create a narrative. </p><p>Being this close to Sodden is another thing Yennefer does not relish in. She’s done well to stay away from this part of the country, better at not setting foot anywhere in the north mainland. The isles have been Yennefer’s refuge and sanctuary since that night she walked out of a medical tent.</p><p>Her head raises when Tissaia steps out of a portal, looking behind her as if she expects someone to be on her tail. She seals the passage and looks to where Yennefer stands</p><p>“I’m so used to meeting you in taverns or inns. This is a change,” Tissaia muses and looks around at the landscape.</p><p>“Also there is little in this blasted country to hold one’s interest,” Yennefer shrugs. “Good tavern or inn included. Honestly, what do people do around here without much of either?” Yennefer looks at Tissaia’s unchanged face and decides for a joke. “Oh, who am I kidding. I am sure Brugge women are overflowing with Brugge men and likewise, Brugge children.” Yennefer bites off the last part. </p><p>“You wanted to meet. You said I was to pick the place and I have, so here I am,” Tissaia opens her arms wide, an almost conciliatory gesture. “Explain to me why a bog witch gives you herbs and moreover, why you let her. Spill forth the contents of your heart so we may be past this.”</p><p>Yennefer steps to within centimeters of Tissaia at her cold tone. Her voice drops an octave, her gaze piercing. She eyes the woman’s mouth, giving the hint of catapulting into her with her lips. She has no intention of that, however. She just wants to make the fear of it bubble in Tissaia’s body. Maybe she wants her to ache a little like she has been doing for six months. </p><p>“I’ve grieved for you, you know,’ Yennefer begins and even reaches out to touch Tissaia’s arm. “You yet walked the earth and all I could think about is how it felt as if I’d lost you completely.” Like the black ooze of rot she’d pulled from her chest inside her dream, she feels things start to eke out. “It’s as if the sun hasn’t risen in half a year, as if I have been followed around by clouds that never let beams of light touch the inside of me.</p><p>“Because I have loved you and had to tell myself that there is no place for it to go, that I must do everything I can but open my veins and let it bleed away slowly.” Yennefer catches the way Tissaia’s eyes track down to her wrists. They both think about the lines there.</p><p>“I needed that dream to make my peace with some things,” Yennefer’s vision goes static and she drifts off. “The thing about something being broken apart, torn up from the inside out, is that no matter how hard one might try, it will never be the same as it was initially.” Her fingers drag lazily across Tissaia’s dress, her chest heavy, tight. But not numb, just resolved. “I’ll not be like I was before falling in love with you, Tissaia. But I will be okay. Somehow, I can make that be enough.”</p><p>Her physical responses to the verbals are not hidden at all. She knows that Tissaia, short of going inside of her head, can feel everything radiating off of her. Now it is her turn to look away in the distance.</p><p>“Your problem is that you have always tried to cure chaos with more chaos. Like one will cancel the other out, like if you’re bigger or more noticeable, the other part will fade. Love cannot be like that. You cannot take one’s turmoil and try to be grander than it so that it disappears,” Tissaia shakes her head. “I didn’t refuse you in that tent at Sodden to break you, Yennefer. I refused you because I didn’t know how to deal with my own turmoil about you.” She turns back to Yennefer at this. </p><p>“There is something to say about loving someone. Well, a lot of things. We do the best we can, sure, but failure and success are so closely tied, neither can be truly extricated from the other most of the time. Successes are often boosted by failures, past points we let ease us into a different way of living.” Tissaia shakes her head again. </p><p>It’s as if Tissaia has curled her palm in Yennefer’s chest and brought forth exactly what she’s been thinking the entire time. That’s what Yennefer had been trying to do with the bog witch, with Cassandra. To find a success tied up with a failure at its root. </p><p>“You speak of grief for the living, but what of the mystery in something that’s been right in front of you the whole time? Starting at Sodden, you became completely new to me and I have known you for close to one hundred years.”</p><p>Tissaia’s words have hope springing where the darkness had been raw and writhing only moments before. Yennefer dares but think that this might be it, where the pain, the shame, the despair, the loneliness-all of it may finally be washed away depending on what Tissaia says next.</p><p>“I don’t want to force my heart upon you,” Yennefer admits. “I never have.” </p><p>Yennefer supposes that her own emotions feel too volatile sometimes, that she’s too quick to shove them onto the world on whoever is near. But this is different, even if it appears just like every other chaotic thing she’s done in her life.</p><p>“I’m scared, Yennefer.” Tissaia’s shoulders sag and it’s so peculiar to watch her deflate this way, so used to holding herself up high. “This is an idea that I had not contended with until you spoke it so at Sodden.”</p><p>Yennefer feels hot, her cheeks aflame. She feels incredibly naive and very young even though she’s done enough living for multiple lifetimes. How can she be standing here after everything and have Tissaia say that she hasn’t thought of Yennefer like this at all? For fuck’s sake, she’s been pining over this woman the greater part of her life, and for what? To bear the markers of rejection time and time again?</p><p>She finds herself sagging too, turning away without being able to form any words to combat what she’s been told. There is little fight coursing in her bones. Yennefer feels incredibly tired. </p><p>Even though she has no idea where to go, she’d rather be anywhere than Brugge (or Skellige) at the moment, so she’s tipping to be on the verge of conjuring a portal when she’s grabbed roughly by the back of her vest and spun around with might she wasn’t expecting. </p><p>Tissaia pushes her against a gnarled tree, its branches twisting in on themselves like Yennefer’s insides feel. Around them, a fog has crept in and it slithers closer to their bodies and what feels like into them. </p><p>“Kiss me,” Tissaia commands with one hand fisting the front of Yennefer’s vest and the other locked around her wrist, holding it to the bark. </p><p>“You’re mad,” Yennefer presses out a laugh from the depths of her diaphragm, disbelieving of the insanity that’s occurring.</p><p>“This is what you have sought, is it not?” Tissaia is not exactly forceful, but she isn’t gentle either. Her blue eyes blaze and she’s looking at Yennefer in a way the sorceress has never seen. In a way, she isn’t sure she could have ever fathomed. Her voice comes out barely a whisper. “You’re right. Sodden happened. What did it all mean if it wasn’t leading to something like this?”</p><p>Fingers are on Yennefer’s chin now, her wrist free from the trunk of the tree, but she daren’t move it as Tissaia leans in and captures Yennefer’s lips with just the slightest scrape of her teeth. </p><p>It’s not like the “vision” or the “dream” or anything Yennefer created with her mind—or so Tissaia says. It isn’t like the life she’s gone back and lived and kissed Tissaia almost a handful of times inside of. </p><p>It’s the push of her lips against Yennefer’s and then not much else after the accidental grazing, just them pushed together and neither of them moving. Sort of suctioned together tightly with one’s eyes closed and the other’s being so at first, but then slowly opening when nothing else happens. </p><p>At first, it’s purple staring at shut ones, but then, as if seeming to feel Yennefer’s eyes upon her, Tissaia’s blue eyes slide open with their mouths still on one another. It’s weird and awkward and kind of fucking wonderful anyway, but Tissaia’s brow furrows and she disconnects them. </p><p>She even tsks after. “Not exactly how I presumed that would go.”</p><p>Now a genuine laugh does bubble from Yennefer. “A mere five minutes ago, you tell me this is something you’ve never imagined but now, our kiss does not live up to expectation? Pardon me for not knowing how to fulfill an idea that was created perhaps four minutes ago. I’ve been kissing you inside my head for seventy years.”</p><p>“Then why wasn’t that a little more animated?” Tissaia goads and Yennefer can’t believe that after everything she’s gone through, everything she’s done, <em> this </em> is what she’s getting. </p><p>“I didn’t see you doing any better,” Yennefer rebuttals haughtily, more than a little agitated to be critiqued on something Tissaia didn’t rise to the occasion for either. </p><p>Anything else Yennefer might have said drowns in her own mouth as Tissaia enters it, all teeth then tongue, then blistering heat as she kisses Yennefer with chaos washing all over them. </p><p>It’s hard to keep up with because Yennefer is being pummeled by forces of anger, but of barely contained desire too. She’s being pulled and yanked and pushed against and she desperately tries to give as good as she gets as she grabs onto the back of Tissaia’s head roughly and unthinkingly wreaks havoc on her wound tight hair with a gloved hand—which she yanks off sometime between Tissaia’s hands connecting with the trunk and Yennefer sliding her hands down to rest behind the woman’s thighs, almost lifting her against her hips but them breaking apart before Yennefer can complete the act.</p><p>Yennefer lets go of where she’s been holding Tissaia, chest heaving and stunned. She lets her hands hover, unsure of what to do next. </p><p>“I suppose we have a problem, Yennefer,” Tissaia announces, sounding very much like a conclusion she has just now drawn. </p><p>“Is that so?” Yennefer’s voice is thick and thready, a little raw sounding when it exits. Even her own vocal cords have been altered by Tissaia’s kisses and touches, of Yennefer’s to her. </p><p>“At some point, you’ve become something to me. More than a student or ally. Someone I trust to do the right thing, even if sometimes it seems incredibly wrong.” Tissaia sighs, like the weight of her whole body is collapsing in on her. “To be there when I need you.”</p><p>Tissaia reaches down, moves Yennefer’s hands back to the jut of her hips, reaches up with her own hands to rest against the sides of Yennefer’s neck. “I cannot give you everything,” she warns. “Nor will I try.” Her fingers dance along the flesh of Yennefer’s throat. “But if anyone on this earth has a chance at my heart, it is you.”</p><p>“Tissaia…”</p><p>And then the woman continues, saying more than Yennefer has ever heard her, more than she thought Tissaia capable of. Like it’s all been held so closely that she can’t help the rush of what she’s speaking now. </p><p>“Let’s try this. Us, whatever is happening. I make no guarantees but Yennefer, this is something I think we must do.” </p><p>Yennefer cannot help what happens next because she becomes so disconnected from her body that she can’t control the way she bends to scoop up Tissaia to hold her in her arms. Tissaia must not be able to contain her response either because she splutters but then a glorious laugh escapes from her throat. </p><p>“Now who’s mad?” Tissaia’s eyes twinkle in the sunlight of the Brugge day. </p><p>Yennefer bends to take their lips against one another once more, her chest feeling as bright as the day. She sits Tissaia down to the ground again, feels the woman rise on his toes to continue the kiss that Yennefer never thought she would be able to receive. </p><p>Finally, she goes flat-footed again and light as a feather, her soul weighing next to nothing. Tissaia almost looks, dare Yennefer think it, <em> happy</em>. </p><p><em> I do that. I can keep making her that way,</em> Yennefer thinks. Her air rushes out in a huff, her smile all teeth. “So you’re ready to do this, with me?” She so badly wants to add ‘for forever’ but can’t. It’s too earlier for that and the last thing she wants to do is lose Tissaia before they even start. </p><p>Tissaia plays coy but then grabs Yennefer by her vest again and pulls her closer. “I expect to be wooed properly.” The words are a sultry growl in Yennefer’s ear, breath against the shell of it, and she almost goes weak in the knees.</p><p>Her arms snake around Tissaia’s mid drift and she does her own kind of pushing. “And what have I been doing since Rinde if not wooing you?”</p><p>“I’ll have you know that just because you’ve managed to bed half of the Continent does in no uncertain terms also include myself,” Tisssia cocks an eyebrow skyward. </p><p>“So you’re going to make me work toward it then.” Yennefer should feel like she’s fallen down a ladder, put out to have to begin an uphill climb again. “I’ll do it every day henceforth. You’ll have never seen someone so dedicated.” </p><p>Yennefer takes her hand in her own, bringing their fingers to lace and their palms to press. She holds Tissaia’s hip with the other and leans against the brown strands of her winding hair. “Please excuse my loquaciousness as I try to charm you beyond all reason, but I assure you that will all cease when you do find me worthy to enter your bed.” Yennefer whispers the next part. “I shall rid the very air from your lungs then.”</p><p>Tissaia gasps but then pulls back as they do a rather odd shuffle in the Brugge dirt. Yennefer never wants to let go. </p><p>The older sorceress searches Yennefer’s face for any lack of sincerity to her words but then understands that Yennefer is all seriousness despite the smile on her face. </p><p>“And perhaps, my dearest Yennefer, I will rob you of yours.” Her blue eyes look into purple and she gets the wickedest grin Yennefer has ever seen in her many years of living. </p><p>Oh. </p><p>For someone who has always thought she was chaos on two legs, Yennefer is beginning to wonder if Tissaia de Vries is more than she’s ever given her credit for—a beautifully spun mystery that could dazzle Yennefer to her very core. </p><p>Watching the Rectoress make her way through the Brugge landscape, Yennefer’s dutiful feet follow behind. She’s anxious to get forever going. </p>
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